


for the darkness, she will come

by angel_deux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, No Incest, POV Jaime Lannister, Sansa and Arya are like 10 and 8 so they're BABIES, anti petyr baelish, as per usual for me it's unhealthy and codependent but the twins do not fuck, extremely unrealistic amputations, in related news, vaguely creepy things but nothing happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-11-28 10:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20965169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Zombie AU. Jaime and Brienne have found the Stark girls, and they're on the way to bring them home. Of course it doesn't go exactly to plan.





	1. I only speak so that you might hear me

**Author's Note:**

> finally, the first chapter of this zombie AU I've been off-and-on working on for months! This one's like, probably 4 chapters max. 
> 
> It jumps back and forth with the timeline, and all the "flashbacks" are in past tense, with the current-day storyline in present. I also try to set it up every time so it's obvious what time period it's in. Let me know if it's too confusing and I'll make the flashbacks italicized or something.

“How come you only have one hand?” Arya asks. She’s walking backward ahead of him, mischievous and fully aware that it’s a shitty thing to ask. Jaime has given up on trying to get her to walk normally, because she has fallen on her ass twice and hasn’t learned by now not to do it. It’s in the hands of the gods now, as far as he’s concerned.

She’s looking to get a reaction out of him, he knows. But honestly, he’s been waiting for the questions about his stump. It seems like the kind of thing that young children would be curious about.

He doesn’t know how to tell the ages of the two Stark girls they rescued. Someone could tell him Arya is five and he’d probably believe them, but he thinks she’s more likely ten-ish. She speaks in full sentences but she sometimes asks questions like that one, so she can’t be much older.

“Gods, Arya,” mutters Sansa from his side. He doesn’t think she’s much older, but she _is _much more well-mannered. She’s clinging to the sleeve of his sweatshirt that trails down over his stump. He’d been sort of joking when he suggested it, but she’s still terrified after everything that went down between Brienne and Baelish, and she needed to feel safe. He couldn’t exactly hold her hand like she wanted; he’s only got the one, and he needs to be able to draw a weapon with it. The sleeve seemed like a good compromise. She looks up at Jaime now, worried he’ll be angry. “You can’t just _ask_ people that.”

“It isn’t polite,” Brienne agrees. She was walking ahead of them down the road, scouting for any sign of trouble, but she’s waiting for them now, hands on her hips, watching him.

Jaime grins at her. He can see from her wary expression that she knows he’s going to answer the question. It’s a very Brienne expression. Very resigned to his bullshit.

“Brienne cut my other one off with a machete,” he says. He lets the information sit for a moment. Brienne grinds her teeth, and his grin grows steadily more shit-eating. Arya’s eyebrows are halfway up her forehead, and her mouth has dropped open like that’s the coolest thing she’s ever heard. Sansa releases his sleeve in shock. He clarifies, “_that_ machete, actually.” He points with his stump to the weapon Brienne still wears at her hip.

“What?” Sansa gasps, covering her mouth with her hands. Her eyes are already wet and teary. Sansa, he thinks, has a bit of a crush on him. It’s one of the reasons why he likes her better, because she obviously has good taste.

“Seven hells,” Arya breathes. She’s looking up at Brienne with the kind of hero worship Jaime’s all too familiar with.

Maybe Arya’s taste is all right, too.

Brienne glares at him.

“_Why_?” Sansa asks.

“Because I annoyed her with too many questions,” Jaime says, trying to sound warning. That’s being a good temporary parent, right? This is parenting. Setting boundaries. _Don’t be annoying or maybe your new temporary mum will cut off your hand, too. _

“He was _bitten_,” Brienne hastens to say, continuing to look murderously in his direction.

“Well, yes,” Jaime admits blithely. He still tries to look stern even though he’s dangerously close to cracking a smile. “But I was also being annoying.”

* * *

He hadn’t much liked Brienne Tarth when he was taken unceremoniously from his jail cell and shoved into her custody. There was entertainment to be had, because she was so dour and stoic and because he was so _not. _He had always had trouble taking things seriously, and it turned out that the apocalypse was no exception. He found an awful lot of grim humor in the situation: being stuck in a cell like laws still mattered when the city was filled with roving packs of mad cannibals. He’d been captured trying to case the survivor compound in the state prison on his father’s orders; his father ran the compound at the hospital, and he didn’t want anyone encroaching on his territory.

He was surprised more people didn’t think it was funny. The whole _thing _was funny, as long as you didn’t look too hard at the stuff that happened to make it not.

_(Like Cersei, weakening. Eyes glazing over. Dying, infection rattling in her lungs and turning her golden light gray. Still locked in her apartment somewhere with a warning note scribbled and stuck to the door because he couldn’t bring himself to kill her.)_

But seriously: territory? Turf? Like all it took was a couple of months without civilization, and everyone resorted to what amounted to a weird blend of gang warfare and feudalism. Tywin Lannister had been the chief of surgery at Kings Landing Hospital when the world still ran the way it was supposed to, and he had maintained his iron grip on the hospital and its surrounding buildings long after it was socially acceptable to try to do so. Ned Stark, meanwhile, ran the state prison before, and he continued to run it after, until a zombie bite made that impossible and the mantle was passed to his pretty, terrifying wife and his teenaged son.

Again: positively feudal. Or maybe it’s more like the mafia. Whatever the appropriate comparison, Jaime thinks it’s ridiculous. And in that ridiculousness, there’s humor. Brienne has never agreed.

He had followed his father’s orders to case the prison, but he’d failed to follow the orders where his father told him not to get caught. Jaime’s always been a bit of a disappointment to his father anyway, so Tywin probably assumed he’d fuck up at least part of it. Catelyn Stark visited him the first day he was a guest in their cells, and she asked him about his father’s compound. Leading questions that made him realize immediately that she was hoping to find someone. He may have been a disappointment to his very clever family, but contrary to their taunts he wasn’t a total fucking idiot. He played the part of the penitent prisoner, and he offered to go back and ask around about whoever she was looking for. If she was as smart as she thought she was, she would have kept things closer to the chest. He had no problem taking advantage of her obvious grief.

It wasn’t that he didn’t feel sorry for her. He did, in the abstract way you feel sorry for orphans in other countries or people who make the headline news because something fucking awful happens to them. Like, you spare them a thought and maybe a few dollars, but they aren’t your family, so there’s a barrier there. Catelyn Stark was the kind of person who would deny that truth, and would hate him for pointing it out, so of course when she declined his offer he babbled something to that effect and let her loathe him.

Jaime doesn’t think he’s always been a monster, but he doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t think of himself as one. Maybe when he was a boy, before he became a boy would do any number of horrible things to make his twin sister happy. Before he became a soldier who turned on his CO because Aerys Targaryen really _was_ a monster, even if the rest of them didn’t want to see it. There must have been a moment when he made the switch from boy to monster, but he isn’t sure anymore when it was. Maybe it was a gradual shift. A slow slide of what was acceptable to him until he woke up one day and there was no limit to what he would do to protect his family. No red line he would refuse to cross.

He tried to escape, that first night. The younger Stark boy raised the alarm, and Jaime took him hostage. Threatened to throw him off the balcony of the tower. The teenager, Robb, snuck up on him and surprised him, and after that it was back into the cells. It was months before anyone came to see him, and then it was Brienne.

* * *

They stop for the night in an old farmhouse that Brienne insisted they clear out on the way to Vale to find the girls. He’d dragged his feet about it then, but she had refused to back down, and she told him that he’d be glad of it on the way back. As always, it’s irritating that she was right, especially since she pointedly refuses to brag about it. She doesn’t even have the ill grace to look _smug_.

There are a few rooms on the first floor with beds, but Brienne makes them all get up to the second floor so she can hack apart the stairs and attach the rope ladder she made when they were here last. They can pull it up behind them and sleep soundly on the second floor, because zombies can’t climb.

“I told you she’s good at everything,” Jaime says aside to the Stark girls. They’re watching Brienne with fascination, and he’s glad that they appreciate her as much as he does. It makes her go all blotchy and red when she sees them watching, and her red blotchiness is one of his favorite things.

The Stark girls take one double bed for themselves, loath to separate for an evening. Jaime knows the feeling; he and Brienne rarely sleep more than a few feet apart these days. There are two more bedrooms upstairs, but they head to the same room together without speaking. There’s well water here so they can wash up. In the morning, maybe he’ll shower.

The bed in the room Brienne chooses is a king. Jaime sits down on it and feels the give. Good beds are hard to come by, lately. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so excited to _sleep _before. The sheets are dusty and smell faintly of _old_, but that’s fine compared to lots of smells he’s smelled lately. 

“This isn’t a bad place,” he says. “Open farmland. A barn. They might have actual crops here, and we could plant new ones.”

“What?” Brienne asks. She’s staring at him as she comes out of the bathroom, still wiping her face with a washcloth. “You want to be a farmer, now?”

“I’m just thinking about our options.”

“We don’t have options. We have a _plan. _We get back to the city. We drop you off at the hospital. Me and the girls continue on to the prison. You convince your father to make peace with the Starks, and there are no more problems between our groups.”

_Our groups_. He fucking hates the way she says that. Can’t she see? How is it possible that she doesn’t? Fucking Sansa Stark, eleven or twelve or however old she is, notices. She sighs wistfully whenever she sees Jaime watching Brienne. Like a _child_ can tell that her crush on him is doomed forever because Jaime is so obvious with his eyes and the way he’s always throwing himself in harm’s way for Brienne, but Brienne just thinks he’s a pest who says these incomprehensible things as a joke and not because yes, Brienne, he fucking wants to be a farmer now if it means you’re going to be telling him what to plant and how to plant it and whatever else she wants to tell him to do.

“I don’t want to go back,” he says. She freezes now. She looks at him. Her eyes are wider than ever, and they were already big enough to lose himself in. Or find himself. Or whatever the case may be.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he blurts. She stares. “I want to stay with you.”

“Oh,” she says. She blinks at him. He waits for her to read into his words, into the tone, into the way he cannot stop staring at her, but of course she doesn’t. “Well, all right. We can figure that out, then.”

And then she climbs into bed beside him as if it’s nothing, as if it’s not a big deal, and she drops off to sleep while he lays beside her and glares at the ceiling.

* * *

It didn’t start out like this.

Catelyn appeared in his cell weeks after the thing with her son. She was still pretty, but there was a wildness to her eyes that hadn’t been there before. There were two people with her. One was Robb, attempting to grow out a beard, as if it would make him seem like less of a child. The other person was, upon close examination, apparently a woman.

“Holy shit,” he said. He wished he was standing so he could see how tall she was beside him.

“I’ve been exchanging messages with your father,” Catelyn said. She took a step into the cell, and he saw that she had a machete held loosely in her hand. Robb looked to the tall woman, plainly concerned, looking for help, and the tall woman looked away. She looked guilty, a bit worried.

Something had happened to Catelyn Stark in those months. Jaime wasn’t sure what it was, but he was wise enough to fear it. He sat up on his bed, inching away from the machete.

“I’m sure my father informed you that he prefers his son in a single piece.”

“Your father has found my girls, and he’s offered them up as a trade,” Catelyn said. Her voice shook with fury at the idea of her precious daughters being held hostage, and even as Jaime continued to be a monster he understood her disgust. He felt it doubly, since he knew his father didn’t have them. No, Tywin was ensuring that Jaime was set free so that he could escape his guard and make his way home. There, he would expect Jaime to report on the fortifications, and the prison would fall to the Lannisters.

Yes, Jaime was a monster, but he got it from _somewhere_.

“All right,” Jaime said. Catelyn lowered the machete, and she held it out and slightly behind her, without looking. The tall woman took it.

“You’ll be accompanied by my bodyguard,” Catelyn said. “I’ve ordered her to bring you back to your father alive, but the number of pieces you’re in when you get to him is up to you. I wouldn’t give her any trouble.”

Jaime looked the woman up and down again.

“You are quite _big_, aren’t you,” he said. To Catelyn, he said, “if you think saddling me with your ugliest escort is going to keep me from using my charms, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Catelyn smiled at him. It was something of an absent smile, as if there was something missing behind it.

“You may try whatever charms you wish,” she said. “Brienne will be unmoved.”

Brienne. That was a pretty name. It made an odd contrast to the rest of her, except perhaps her eyes, which were big and blue. She was flushing, but her expression was impassive. He couldn’t tell if she was hurt or embarrassed or angry.

Well, good. He’d been so fucking bored for the past few months. A challenge like Brienne was exactly what he needed.

* * *

In the middle of the night, Jaime wakes up, warm. He can hear Brienne’s steady breathing just beside him, the two of them huddled together in the middle of the big bed, the way they always seem to. It’s windy outside, and he hears some pattering raindrops, but is that all? He sits, and he strains to listen. His stump aches. Maybe that’s what woke him?

He can’t hear anything, so he gets to his feet. The farmhouse is old, but sturdily made, and the floorboards don’t creak. He reaches for the crowbar by the bed, and he puts his pistol in the holster at his waist. He never bothered to take the belt off. He was too annoyed at Brienne’s stubborn avoidance to ask her for help with the buckle.

There are no lights in the house, obviously, but after months of total darkness at night, he’s gotten used to that. He can see his way by the moonlight usually, but there’s none tonight. It’s overcast. The hacked apart stairs overlook the first floor, and he stands there at the edge until his eyes adjust enough for him to confirm that there’s nothing down there. There’s no movement, and he knows the doors haven’t been breached, because that would have woken more than just him on this otherwise quiet night. So what was it?

He checks in on the girls and finds them snuggled together in the double bed. Arya is younger and smaller, but she’s holding protectively to Sansa as if she isn’t either of those things. Their window is open, and the curtains give him a minor heart attack when they move.

Maybe something is outside. Maybe that’s what woke him.

He is well used to walking quietly by now, and he’s silent as he moves across the room. There’s a quiet gasping noise from behind him, and he looks, and he sees that Sansa’s eyes are open. Not with a half-lidded just-woken-up look, but in a way that tells him she has been awake for a while.

“There’s something out there,” she whispers.

He holds up his stump to shush her, forgetting momentarily that he has no fingers to press to his lips. He wants to scold both of them for opening this window when they should have known that they can’t.

He makes it to the window, and he watches.

He sees nothing at first, because he’s scanning the ground. Then the cloud cover clears. Just for a moment. The moon shines down, and he sees the figures on top of the barn.

On top of the barn.

Humans.

Zombies can’t climb.

Jaime always used to hate it in zombie movies where the thesis seemed to be something like “humans are the real problem”. Humans have always been a fucking problem, but surely the mindless cannibals are a bigger one.

He was more _annoyed_ than anything else when humanity had to be a big enough shit to prove him wrong. Zombies suck, zombies cost him his hand, but only because people were big enough assholes to draw the zombies to him and Brienne in the first place.

People so rarely have good intentions after the end of the world, and he thinks it’s probably safe to make a few assumptions about the kind of people who lurk around on a barn roof in the middle of the night.

“Sansa,” he whispers. “Wake your sister, and the two of you go wake Brienne.”

“What is it?” Sansa asks.

“People on the barn,” he says, in the same tone in which his father might have said ‘_don’t ask questions. Just do as you’re told’_.

Sansa whispers his words in Arya’s ear as Jaime continues to watch their stalkers. They aren’t moving much. They talk to each other, and they pace along the small space they have. He can hear the wind, and it doesn’t bring any of those creepy telltale moaning sounds that the zombies can’t seem to help but make, but Jaime has learned his lesson—twice, now!—about how people use the zombies in this new world, and he has the girls to be responsible for.

And Brienne. He’s not responsible for her. He’s learned in their time together that, if anything, he’s better off just trying to stay out of her way. But he’s done deluding himself into pretending that she isn’t a major factor in his continued drive to keep surviving even despite his lost hand and his lost sense of self.

Sansa and Arya slip out of the room, all packed up, their bags on their backs. They were living fairly easily in Vale, but Jaime had felt a pang of sadness to notice just how adept they already were at surviving. It has kept them alive so far. It can only be a good thing. But still, it makes him ache.

Jaime breathes better when he knows they’re with Brienne, and without the distraction of worry, he can pay more attention to the details. One of the shapes keeps holding something up. A radio? One of the men is tall and bulky, and there are shapes that look to be women. One that might be a child. It eases his fears, a bit. Women can still be plenty dangerous, but they don’t tend to run with the _worst_ groups. Those are left to men alone.

He feels Brienne beside him even before she puts her hand on his shoulder. He turns to look at her, her pale face illuminated by the moonlight. Her cheeks are slightly pink from sleep, and her hair is an unholy mess, and he takes a moment to appreciate how much he likes her ugly face and how much he’ll miss it if things go to total shit in the next few minutes.

“People on the barn,” he says. Brienne shifts closer, the line of her body melding with his. He can feel the rifle she’s holding in her free hand, bumping up against his leg. She moves behind him, to the other side, peering out.

“The road north is out the other side,” she says. “We could run.”

“At night?” he points out. Not that he needs to. Everyone knows the zombies are more active at night. “We won’t make it far if they’re here for us. They might not be the only ones. They might have friends waiting outside.”

“Then we need a distraction,” Brienne replies, and she doesn’t look at him when she says it. Probably she knows what his reaction is going to be.

“No,” he says. She looks at him then, one eyebrow raised. He doesn’t back down. He reaches for her hand in the dark and can’t find it. Settles for gripping her wrist instead. “Brienne, _no_.”

* * *

Jaime laughed more with Brienne in their first two miserable days together than he had since maybe Aerys. With Brienne’s scowls and implacable hatred, he could forget the mad gleam of fire and blood in his CO’s eyes. He could forget the life fading from his sister’s. He could even forget the years before that, always drifting on the outside of his family, scorned and hated and desired for one thing or another, never finding a solid place where he could be sure he would not be turned away.

He hadn’t had a lot of reasons to laugh. Not in years. But that was exactly why he did it, especially with Brienne.

She was just so _staid_. Nothing seemed to bother her, if you weren’t looking very closely. But Jaime could see the way her jaw ticked with tension and the way she squared her shoulders. It was like learning to play an instrument, learning all the ways he could set her off. He had spent so long in that fucking jail cell, waiting for someone to interact with. When given the chance, of course he did whatever he could to understand Brienne.

She was prickly and defensive after years of assholes like him digging into her where it hurt. Forming callouses over her weakest points until even his most creative barbs barely seemed to sting her. He knew that didn’t mean they _didn’t_ sting. He learned to read the pain for what it was.

She was unforgiving. She dragged him around by his bound hands and she shoved him against walls and through doorways, and all the while he stumbled along as if drunk, loving every second of her attempts to shut him up by handling him roughly. Even reacting with fluttering eyelashes and purred promises about _later_ did nothing to break through to her beyond the first few times, when she jerked away from him and wiped her hands on her jeans as if his touch had soiled her.

She was _infuriating_. He loved every second of it.

On the third day, they ran into the Mummers.

They were barely a day from the hospital, at the careful speed they were forced to move through the overrun city. Brienne was more cautious than ever, doing her best to avoid Lannister patrols in the area.

“You realize,” he said, drawled as if uncaring. “That my father doesn’t have the Stark girls, don’t you?” Brienne truly faltered for the first time, and Jaime laughed at her. “You really thought he had them. Oh, Brienne.”

“Shut up,” Brienne hissed.

“He never had any intention of honoring anything. You’ll be lucky if you take a bullet in the head. You should just let me go here. I…”

She shoved him back into an alley, pinning him against the wall with her forearm while her other hand clamped against his mouth. He froze, utterly stunned, a deerlike reaction to a flight or fight response. Except his muscles weren’t stiffening, preparing for a blow. No, he felt _loose_, ungainly, out of control of his limbs. Like half a fucking swoon or something. A boneless need.

She was still so ugly, mismatched. Big lips and teeth and unsightly freckles and scars. But her eyes were big and blue and so close. Beseeching. He _wanted_ her.

“Shut up,” she whispered, and then he heard them.

* * *

“I don’t have time to argue with you, Jaime,” Brienne whispers. She’s packing what little she took from her pack before they turned in, and she shoves the whole thing into Sansa’s waiting arms. Sansa’s looking at Jaime pleadingly, like she thinks Jaime isn’t desperate enough to try and stop Brienne on his own.

“It’s not an argument. You’re just doing the stupidest fucking thing you can think of to do and refusing to listen to reason,” Jaime hisses in return. “We need to _leave_. All of us.”

“We’ll never make it in the dark unless something draws any nearby zombies _here_. And those guys on the roof might not be alone. You’re the one who pointed that out.”

“Then it should be me.”

Brienne stands to her full height. She does that sometimes, he’s noticed. Usually when he’s being difficult. Like he needs to be reminded that she could beat the shit out of him if it came down to it. Not that she ever _would. _It has only ever been a bluff, even before she started liking him.

He doesn’t back down. Rarely does. Just steps closer to her, trying to look rational and not _desperate_.

“You’re taking the girls,” she says. “You and the girls are what will keep the peace between your father and the Starks.”

“You _still_ don’t understand, do you? The Lannisters don’t look out for _anyone_ else. Brienne, if I go back to my father’s with them, he’ll just take them and use them as leverage.”

“Then skip past the hospital. Take them back to Catelyn.”

“And then what? He’ll just want me to turn on them again.”

“Well, so _don’t_,” Brienne says, like it’s obvious. “How old are you? And you’re telling me you can’t stand up to your father?”

She says it like it’s simple, but she doesn’t know Tywin Lannister. She doesn’t understand the sway he has over his people or the disdain he has for his children. But Jaime can’t say any of that without sounding whining or weak.

“Brienne…” he tries.

“If you die, Jaime,” Brienne interrupts patiently. “The peace dies with you. No matter what. You might be right about your father. He might not honor anything. But he’ll burn the Starks to the ground if you’re killed.”

Jaime doesn’t argue with that, because he can’t, because it’s true, and if he was a little less attached to her, he would even agree. But the time for practicality has passed. Somewhere along the line she has transformed from his jailer to his friend to a woman he cares for beyond all reason. He has bared every secret he has ever had to her. He told her about _Aerys_. He can’t believe she hasn’t seen it yet.

“If you die,” Jaime starts. His voice is _shaking_ with the rage he already feels at the thought.

“You’ll get the girls back safely to their mother,” Brienne finishes softly.

“And you’ll be dead. I won’t let that happen.”

She has the nerve to look _surprised_ by his vehemence, and he wants to grab her by her stupidly broad shoulders and shake her until she understands. The girls are both watching this conversation with blank, hopeless looks, and he knows _they_ would probably prefer if he were the one to stay behind and risk his life, too.

“Jaime,” Brienne says quietly. “It has to be you.”

So Jaime kisses her.


	2. I don't wanna be the one to call it out, love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is a little late for me! I've had an oddly busy weekend and this chapter was kind of a beast to edit
> 
> title is from Red Earth & Pouring Rain by Bear's Den because this IS a Bear's Den appreciation fic

After the zombies came, the smartest people huddled up into groups consisting of the people who happened to be closest to them when the zombies came. That was how Brienne ended up with the Starks—she had been visiting the prison when the city erupted because she was a public defender (which made Jaime howl with laughter when she first mentioned it. Fucking…of _course_ she was a public defender).

Tywin was smart, too. He locked down the hospital and took in stragglers and kept them quarantined long enough to make sure they didn’t spread the infection through his halls. By the end of the first month, he had a hundred acolytes willing to do whatever he asked of them because he took them in, he saved their families, he kept them fed and gave them beds to sleep in.

Jaime, likely to no one’s surprise, _wasn’t_ one of the smart ones. He chose the reckless and impulsive thing instead. He went for Cersei first. Finding her at her apartment, already dying of a bite to the neck, he then went looking for Tyrion at all his little brother’s usual haunts. Moving around the city so much, especially in those early days of total chaos, was a risk. People were panicked and jumpy and trigger-happy, and a lot of the places Jaime went to look for Tyrion were run by less-than-savory people who weren’t eager to answer any of Jaime’s probing questions. The zombies were easy enough to outrun, and Jaime had no problem taking down the ones he couldn’t run away from. He never was good for much, but he turned out to be _exceptionally _good at surviving. He breezed easily through places that might have been impassable to a normal person. But his survival skills were no help to Tyrion, who appeared to have disappeared entirely. 

After failing to save his sister and failing to find any sign of his brother, Jaime went to see if his father was still at the hospital. He had spent half his life doing terrible things because Cersei wanted him to, so it seemed only natural to start doing them for his father once Cersei was dead.

* * *

The gang who called themselves the Bloody Mummers were also smart. They were smart because they were ruthless, and they were ruthless because it was the best way to survive. They comprised one of a hundred gangs exactly like them in the city. They had survived the first few months, and they thought themselves untouchable. A lonely pair like Jaime and Brienne were the perfect targets.

Jaime and Brienne both knew the city equally well, so they ran, whispering urgent directions to each other. Jaime kept insisting that she take his cuffs off, because he knew he could help her take a few of the men down if she did, but she ignored him. She pulled him unrelenting down side streets and back alleys. He hissed out suggestions that she occasionally listened to, though that was probably more incidental than purposeful. They thought they were getting away.

They turned a corner and found themselves facing a chain-link fence on one side, with a whole host of zombies behind it. A trap, Jaime could tell. Too perfectly constructed to be an accident. A cage in which someone had been gathering these monsters to use as a weapon. When he and Brienne turned to try and find some other way out, they found the alley behind them blocked off by a line of people. Most of them were armed. All of them were laughing. All of them were men. They were so pleased with themselves that their plan to trap their prey had worked.

One of them stepped forward and launched fully into this villainous monologue that was probably meant to be terrifying but which fell a bit short because of his constant misuse of grandiose words and also his lisp. The fence behind which the zombies were held began to creak alarmingly as they pressed up against it, trying to get to the warm bodies beyond. Brienne seemed unbothered by any of it. She squared her shoulders and stood in front of Jaime as if to protect him, and she rattled off her mission and how Jaime was vital to restoring the peace between Lannister and Stark.

“They don’t care about that,” Jaime hissed to her.

“What else would you have me do?” she hissed back.

In the end, they didn’t have much of a choice. Brienne passed Jaime the handcuff keys and prepared to face the advancing men. They goaded her as they approached, like hunters taunting a wounded animal, at turns calling her hideous and telling her exactly how they wanted to fuck her. Telling her she had no choice: it was them or the zombies. Jaime’s head was pounding, thinking of Aerys again, thinking of the screams of that woman he was dragging by her hair when Jaime shot him in the back.

He scrabbled with the keys and finally managed to unlock his hands just as the fence behind them collapsed.

Most of the men immediately began to run, panicking openly in the face of their plan going to shit. Their ringleader was slower to act, gaping in horror as the zombies oozed out from behind the fence, mindlessly churning forward and tumbling over each other in their haste like a slow, odious wave. Then he ran, because he saw that Jaime’s hands were free and that Brienne still had both her guns.

Fighting side by side with Brienne was something of a revelation. She threw him the rifle she always wore at her back, and she turned out to have a stunning amount of accuracy with her pistol. Maybe not better than him, but _close_. They made quick work of the nearest zombies, and then they began their retreat. The Mummers were ahead of them down the alley, still running, but they fired back at Jaime and Brienne to make sure they didn’t get too close, trying to force them to lag behind enough so the zombies would get them. Like being eaten alive would be a better choice than taking a bullet to the head. Brienne carried extra ammo tucked into every pocket and some in her boots as well. She seemed to know exactly when Jaime was about to run out, and she’d shout his name and pass him some more, and they’d open fire behind them. It didn’t seem to make a difference. For every zombie that fell, more appeared behind it. That was the problem with living in the city. There never seemed to be an end.

Briefly, in the middle of the fighting, it crossed Jaime’s mind: if he shot Brienne, maybe he would be able to get away.

He didn’t.

They held the zombies off and hurried after the Mummers, neither of them knowing what they were going to do when they caught up. Jaime fired a few rounds ahead at the fleeing men, and he grazed a few but hit one solidly in the thigh. The Mummer fell, screaming, and the others left him behind. Brienne grabbed Jaime by the shoulder and shoved him down an alley. He understood what she was doing: hopefully, the zombies would go for the bleeding man instead of following harder-to-catch prey.

He could hear the man’s screams echoing off the buildings as they ran, and he was the one who pulled Brienne this time, back into a cross-street. The Mummers were yelling from somewhere close by, and Jaime and Brienne nearly tripped over each other in their haste to duck into yet another back street. One man burst out of a door just in front of them. Brienne fired, but she only had the one round left, and the Mummer came at them, swinging a knife clutched in the hand of the arm that didn’t have the new shoulder wound. Brienne dodged the blade and tackled him bodily into the street. The zombies continued to pour from the cross-street, following them. Fewer than before, but the easy meal hadn’t been enough to distract all of them. Jaime fired at them until he was out, keeping the zombies back from Brienne and the man she was fighting, but he knew it wasn’t going to last.

“Brienne!” he shouted, the moment he ran out of ammo, but she was still fighting. He turned over his shoulder to look. Her face was running with blood, and she spat out a chunk of the man’s ear as he landed a weak punch to her cheek. “Brienne! Finish him off! I need you!”

He swung the rifle at the zombies when they got too close. They were slow, but they seemed to pick up speed and intensity as they got closer to Brienne’s blood. Jaime was backing away, desperately checking behind him as the gap between he and Brienne shrunk. Brienne was finally on her feet, staggering. She loaded the pistol with shaking hands. She fired, taking out the zombie closest to him.

Another one surged, its jaws open, and it flung itself at him. The impact overbalanced him, knocked him flat. He yelled, terror overtaking him, thinking again of Cersei’s dead eyes. The way she looked, watching him. Grief and fear turning to mindless hunger. _No. No I can’t. _

The zombie’s teeth sank into the palm of his hand as he tried to shove it away. Brienne kicked it off Jaime and then grabbed him under the shoulders. She pulled him, dragged him into the building from which the Mummer had emerged, and then they were in a dark hallway. She shoved the door closed. They could hear the Mummer being torn to pieces outside. Still screaming. Jaime sat up, and he stared down at his hand. Dead. He was dead.

Brienne shoved him down again, flat on his back. She climbed on top of him. Straddled him, pinning down his hips. What the fuck was she doing? Nothing was making any sense. She grabbed his injured hand. One knee planted firmly on his other arm, pinning it to the floor. She pulled off her belt.

“No, wait,” he said. She wrapped the belt around his right arm. She pulled it tight. He tried to lift her off him, but he couldn’t. He tried to free his left hand, but her knee was immovable.

“I’m sorry,” she said. He tried to pull his bitten hand away. He tried to gain a foothold.

“Please, don’t!” he begged.

She pulled the machete off her belt, and she pressed his right hand against the floor, and she brought the machete down.

* * *

Brienne allows the kiss for several seconds. She allows it even through Sansa’s gasp and Arya’s impatient sigh. She leans into it, and into the hand he has laid along one cheek.

When she pulls back, he can tell that she isn’t happy. If he had to guess, he’d say she’s angry and confused. But she allowed the kiss, and he knows that he isn’t the only one who has been wanting.

“What?” she asks, as if he has asked her a particularly confusing question. A little irritated. A little amused. Mostly just uncomprehending, and he wants to laugh at her even though he knows it isn’t her fault that people haven’t seen her for the treasure she is. Of course she doesn’t understand why he wants her. No one has ever wanted her out loud before.

“I can’t let you die,” he says. Brienne hesitates. “I’m a selfish man, Brienne. You know this about me. I don’t do anything unless it’s for the people I love. Let me stay for you. Please. None of it will mean anything if you aren’t there to boss me around.”

She lets out a sound that may be a laugh or may be a scoff of denial, and she looks at him with fury and something else. Fear. Want. He can’t tell in the darkness. He isn’t used to being the one off-balanced. He was so sure back at the beginning that she had _nothing_ he wanted. Now he _needs_, and he’s so afraid. He’s not used to needing like this.

“You need to go, or we all die,” she says. She grabs the collar of his shirt, and she hauls him closer. Manhandling him the way she did when they were in the city. “Jaime, I mean it.”

He can only see her eyes. The steady, calm, pleading look within them. There will be no convincing her. He knows it. He closes his eyes. He nods.

* * *

Sansa’s crying quietly, because she’s a good girl who knows the stakes. Arya is furious, glaring daggers at him and stomping in the leaves until Sansa sobs and begs her to stop or they’ll be heard. Jaime exists on autopilot, leading Sansa by the sleeve of his maimed wrist while his whole hand holds the machete. The pistol is in his holster, as a last resort. If they have to use that, the sound will draw the zombies and their stalkers, and they’ll surely die.

They’re well up the road by the time they hear the explosion. Sound has seemed strange since the zombies came. Everything is so quiet that even out here in the countryside, everything seems to echo and get larger as a result. The explosion roils, the firelight stunning through the trees.

“Brienne,” Sansa sobs, and Jaime swallows the lump in his own throat.

“Can’t be too surprised she knows how to rig something to blow,” he whispers, trying to sound cheerful. “Come on. She’ll catch up. We have to keep moving.”

“No!” Arya yells, loud, pulling on Sansa’s hand, digging her heels in. Sansa’s fingers stay wrapped in Jaime’s sleeve, and the sudden loss of momentum is jarring. He glares back at the younger Stark girl. Her face, he sees now, is wet with tears. “Not without Brienne!”

“We can’t stop, Arya,” he says. “Brienne can take care of herself.”

“No she _can’t_! That’s stupid! No one can take care of themselves! People die when they try!”

“Arya, please stop shouting,” Sansa whispers desperately, releasing Jaime so she can pull her younger sister into a grasping hug. “Please!”

“We have to go back!” Arya demands.

“Don’t you think I _want_ to?” Jaime asks.

“So why _don’t_ you?” Arya spits.

“She gave me my orders.”

“Is she your _boss_?” Arya asks. “Does she always tell you what to do?”

“Yes,” he says, because it’s simpler than explaining that Brienne is right and that he just wishes she wasn’t. Arya sobs, and she pulls away from Sansa to wipe furiously at her eyes. She tries to shove Jaime, but she’s short and small and it doesn’t move him at all, frustrating her further.

“We can’t leave her.”

“She’ll catch up to us!”

“You’re just afraid. You’re just a big coward.”

“Arya!” Sansa scolds.

“She would never leave him there!” Arya insists.

And, well. Jaime doesn’t think that’s true. Brienne isn’t an idiot like him. When she says that something is important, she actually means it. If he had convinced her with his kiss that he should be the one to stay behind, she would have taken the girls. She would have gotten a lot farther than this already. She wouldn’t be dragging her feet. She might be sad about it, sure. But the girls are more important, and he knows that.

But Arya raises a good point: Jaime isn’t Brienne. He has never been the kind of person to choose to do the _right_ thing when he could instead do the selfish thing. Maybe wanting to rescue a woman isn’t a selfish thing, but it’s a selfish thing when you want to rescue her because you’re in love with her. Selflessness would be fulfilling her promise and getting the Stark girls home.

But Jaime isn’t Brienne. Jaime is Jaime.

* * *

When Jaime was awake again, one hand was cuffed to a radiator. His other hand was gone. The cuff rattled when he woke, and he lifted his eyes to find Brienne pointing the pistol in his face. She was looking at him warily, and her hands were shaking.

He remembered flashes. The pain of the machete taking his hand had knocked him out, but he woke again when she cauterized the wound. It was brief, and agonizing, and he remembered that they were in a kitchen somewhere, the back of a restaurant, and she was apologizing over and over again as she held his stump against the fire and…

He remembered another moment, another few seconds of consciousness. She was putting him down. She must have been carrying him. His arm hurt. He groaned. She shushed him. Her hand was on his face.

“I’m here, Jaime,” she said, and he realized that he had been saying her name. Over and over. Begging her. “I’m here. It’s all right. I’m here.”

Jaime looked away from Brienne’s worried eyes and the pistol she was holding, and he found the stump. It was wrapped carefully in clean white linens that looked like they were probably cut from someone’s bedsheets. It was an old apartment they were in, hence the radiator, and the hardwood floors were scratched and dusty. This wasn’t a nightmare. This was real. His hand was gone.

“Are you you?” Brienne asked, and he forced his eyes to focus back on her face. He tried to clench his right hand into a fist. Nothing happened, because it wasn’t there, but he almost _felt_ like it did, and for some reason that made him feel almost physically sick.

“If I say no, do you promise to shoot me?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, and he remembered screaming when she took the hand. She lowered the gun.

“It worked,” she said, defensive. “You didn’t turn.”

He laughed. Or he meant to laugh, but it turned instead into weeping. Brienne put the pistol down on the table behind her, and she inched towards him. She unlocked his left hand, and he covered his face with it, drawing away. Her hand was on his shoulder, then. Her thumb pressed into the skin of his neck.

“I’m sorry, Jaime,” she said, and he could hear tears in her voice, too.

He didn’t want her apologies or her regrets. He wanted his fucking hand back. He wanted her to kill him. He wished she had uncuffed him before, so he could have prevented all of this. He wished he hadn’t gotten caught by the Starks. He wished he had killed the younger boy when he had the chance. He wished he had shot Brienne.

Her hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his neck, because he was still crying. He hadn’t cried in front of anyone else since he was a boy, unless he wanted to count the zombie that Cersei became. It didn’t feel _real_ to be doing it then. He leaned forward and rested his forehead against Brienne. Her chest, maybe, or her shoulder. It didn’t even matter. She was strong enough to hold his weight. Her fingers brushed through the hair at the back of his neck.

“It’s all right,” she was telling him. “It’s all right.”

“I think you mean all left,” he managed deliriously, choking out a laugh, and she froze and then sighed and sounded almost amused when she next spoke.

“You’re going to be okay,” she said.

* * *

Brienne was gentle with him for those first two days after she took his hand. _Too_ gentle, almost. She was kind and gave him a larger portion of their rations even though he pointed out that he had fewer body parts to nourish than he used to. She was quietly guilty about the whole thing, and she didn’t bother cuffing him again. They both knew he would be helpless without her. He was weak and could barely stand. His left hand was clumsy and useless. He had no control over anything. Just stumbled along in her wake like a drunk or like a toddler just learning to walk.

On the third day, his arm hurt badly enough that she took off the bandages to get a look at the wound. When the bandages were gone, there was this wretched smell, and Brienne blanched and pushed his face away when he tried to look and promised that he didn’t want to see it. He developed a worrying cough. He had trouble keeping his food down. He tended to ramble always, but when the fever was on him he couldn’t shut up. He wept again when he told her about Aerys. He tried to convince her to kill him by telling her all the worst things he had done when he was fully under his sister’s spell. Brienne never wavered. She never left.

“What if it’s just slow?” he asked once, when he could barely keep his eyes open because the fatigue was overwhelming. Brienne shook her head.

“It’s not,” she said. “It never takes more than a day. It’s been three, Jaime.”

“What if you just delayed it?”

“Jaime.”

“You should cuff me back to the radiator,” he said. Brienne stared at him. “If I turn in the middle of the night, I could bite you. You should protect yourself.”

Brienne shook her head, and she touched him. His face, his shoulder. She brushed his hair back and pretended that she was the kind of person who idly touched monsters like him, like she thought he wouldn’t realize she was checking his temperature if she pretended that it was just idle touch. He leaned into it anyway, hungry for the feeling of her cool skin on his. That night, she huddled with him to try and keep him warm as he shivered from the fever. She pulled a single blanket over both of them. She didn’t cuff him to the radiator. She held him instead.

They left the apartment behind the following day. By the time they reached their destination, she was carrying him again.

He had assumed that she was taking him back to the hospital where his father reigned, but she admitted that they had gotten turned around when the Mummers attacked, and they were further from the hospital than they had been. She took him instead to a clinic she used to go to in the city, hoping that there would still be something in the way of antibiotics or at least clean bandages, and they found that the building had been claimed and was somehow _still _operational, being run an elderly doctor named Olenna Tyrell, who chastised Brienne for botching the amputation and immediately started ordering her about so that she could fix it.

Olenna and her two grandchildren weren’t the only ones living in the clinic, but Olenna ruled them all with her sharp tongue and her penchant for having good ideas that led to their continued survival. Even the worst of her tenants, stodgy old Randyll Tarly, followed her orders.

Her granddaughter Margaery was barely a teenager, but she assisted Olenna when they put Jaime under to cut away the infected flesh and pull a flap of skin over the stump to close it fully.

When Jaime was awake again, he found his stump easier to look at, and that horrible smell was gone. The stitching was ugly, and he had a feeling it wouldn’t _stop _being ugly, but it was more bearable than it was before. It still hurt, because they didn’t have many pain meds left and Olenna told him he should just stop being such a baby and suck it up. Brienne argued in her soft way, trying to get them to spare something, but Jaime didn’t mind the pain. It was better than the delirium that had started to settle over him during the worst of the fever.

Brienne still hovered, making sure he was comfortable, and he started to recognize her guilt for what it was. It was _his _turn to feel guilty, then. She had saved him. She’d cut off his hand to do it, but she had taken care of him after. She could have just let him die, but she didn’t. And if it was really only because of the _trade_, she wouldn’t have been as gentle with him as she was.

She cared about him. And he was surprised to find that he cared about her.

“I’m not angry with you,” he said once, after she had poked her head into his room for the tenth time in the past few hours, just to make _sure _he was okay, even though he kept telling her that he was. “I know you saved my life.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.” But he still saw that guilty tension in her. That new way she looked at him. Like she _owed _him something, even though he knew that he was the one who owed.

* * *

Brienne found a place quickly with the group at the clinic. She spent most of her days scavenging out in the city with Randyll Tarly and Hyle Hunt. Both men seemed skeptical of her at first, but they didn’t have any complaints when they returned, and they asked if she’d be going with them the following day. Jaime found himself feeling _proud_ of Brienne. Pleased for her that she was doing so well and pleased that she always seemed happier at the end of the day. Every time she came back, she gifted him with something she had found out in the city for him, like she was chipping away at her debt with chocolate bars and knitted scarves and well-fitting leather jackets.

At the end of the week, Olenna went to see Jaime. She sat down on the edge of his bed. There was nothing grandmotherly or soft or gentle about Olenna Tyrell. She was all thorns. A flashing warning sign of a person.

“Tomorrow, Hyle is going to head towards your father’s _stronghold_,” she said, her sarcasm illustrating exactly how she felt about Tywin Lannister fancying himself some kind of warlord. “I can have him take a message from you. I assume Tywin will send someone to escort you back. I don’t trust Hyle to do it, frankly.”

“Brienne is my escort,” Jaime said. “My bodyguard.”

“The girl saved your life,” Olenna said. Her voice was sharp.

“I’m aware of that! I wasn’t being sarcastic. She’s my protector.”

“And yet you would have her lead you into the lion’s den? One-handed and weak? We both know that your father wouldn’t let her leave, especially once he finds out that she’s the one who took your hand. Oh, don’t argue. We both know she saved your life. But is _he _going to think so? Or is he going to blame Brienne and the Starks for getting you maimed?”

“I won’t let him hurt her,” Jaime insisted.

“You and I both know that you won’t be able to stop him. Brienne will be leaving here tomorrow to find the Stark girls. Alone.”

Jaime’s stomach physically sank at the thought of Brienne striking out without him. Leaving him behind. Going through everything without someone behind her to help. He wasn’t sure what help he would _be_, considering he was still clumsy with his left hand and would never be as competent as he used to be. But he was _something_, wasn’t he?

“She’s agreed to that?” he asked.

“It was her idea. Once she knew that we would keep you safe until your father’s men came for you, she knew she had to leave. She has a promise to fulfill, and if your father doesn’t have those girls, then she must find them on her own. She’s the most stubborn person I’ve ever met in my life, but I have nothing but admiration for her courage. She can’t be here when they come for you, Jaime. Surely even _you_ understand that.”

* * *

He had gone and found Brienne, after that. She was on watch, on the roof, scanning the city with a pair of binoculars. She looked at him like she was surprised to see him, and he decided that he hadn’t done enough to show his gratitude. If she could still be so shocked that he was seeking her out, clearly she didn’t know just how much he felt he owed her. Or how much he _liked _her, even. It wasn’t just about owing anymore. She had done more for him than anyone ever had. He was little more than a pest to her, a prisoner turned reluctant ally, but she had treated him better than…well. Anyone else he cared about. He had dedicated his entire _life _before the zombies came to making sure his privileged family never had to struggle for anything, and none of them had treated him with half the kindness that his Stark jailer did. Not unless they wanted something, anyway.

How was it possible she didn’t realize that? How was it possible she didn’t know how monumental she was?

“I don’t want to go back to my father,” he said. She stared at him. He felt exposed under her gaze, and it made him prickly and defensive. “He expects me to come running back to do his bidding some more, and I don’t want to. I want to help you find the girls. I know I won’t be much use without a hand but I...”

“Okay,” Brienne said, cutting him off. She looked surprised by his request, but she didn’t hesitate. “We can go.”

He sent Hyle with a message to his father, explaining everything. And for the first time in his life, he boldly did the one thing that he knew his father wouldn’t want him to do. He went with Brienne.

* * *

All the way back through the woods to find Brienne, Jaime curses himself. Why is he such an idiot?

He helped the girls climb up into a tree that should keep them safe from any passing zombies, and he had begged them to stay as quiet and still as possible until he came back for them, but he’s still filled with dread. Brienne is in trouble, but she’ll fucking _kill_ him if he rescues her and the girls are harmed. Or if he fails to rescue her and gets killed trying and leaves the girls without an escort. Or…

Reckless and impulsive is all he’s ever been, but this doesn’t feel like a reckless and impulsive decision. It doesn’t feel like a decision at all. It feels like the only thing he can do. Going back for her. Saving her. He should have fought her harder. He should have insisted. The world won’t suffer for the lack of him the way it will suffer for the lack of her. It should have been _simple_.

He was good at this once. Sneaking quiet and striking fast. Never caring much about the targets until he served under Aerys and learned to question the things he had been told about the war they were fighting. A war his family supported, because it was good for their interests. A war that saw thousands of people killed. A war that saw innocents murdered.

Those skills have gone to rust a bit in the years since he shot Aerys in the back and accepted his father’s help to have everything covered up. It was an end to his days as a soldier, but he was more than ready for it to end by then, and he never mourned the loss. He mourns it now, a bit. If he was still himself...younger and braver and more skilled. Possessing both hands. Maybe this would be easier.

He’s still quick and quiet, and there’s a kind of dead calm that has come over him. A certainty of his choices, maybe. Knowing that it’s for _Brienne_. Using these skills for good, to protect someone who doesn’t usually need it but who has never done anything to stop deserving it.

And to protect someone he loves. He told her that, didn’t he? After he kissed her. He told her that he only ever does anything for the people he loves. He wouldn’t have even known it _himself_ if he hadn’t said it, but now he realizes. _Love _is exactly what this is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GRRM: *puts like 2 lines about brienne taking care of jaime after he lost his hand*  
Me: Cool *writes about it in every single one of my fics because I CANT GET ENOUGH*


	3. a stranger who I learned to love

Jaime reaches the hill behind the farmhouse at last. He spots Brienne through the trees, in the light of the fire that lingers after the explosion she rigged, but it’s the gunshots that have him running.

He’s too late. He’s a fool, like his father always said.

But when he gets close enough to the edge of the treeline to see, he realizes that Brienne hasn’t been shot. She’s kneeling out in the open, her hands behind her head. Her face is wet with blood from something torn open, and she’s staring up at her captors. Sneering. Defiant.

Jaime’s heart stutters in his chest, and he freezes. He knows that he has to move, but he also knows that one wrong decision and he’ll have to see her brains splattered all over the ground. He can’t do that. He can’t lose her too.

The people surrounding Brienne are all wearing gear that makes him think of his father’s people, but they aren’t marked with the Lannister crimson that Tywin decided would make it easier for his groups to identify each other in the field. They’re all armed, positively dripping in weapons, most of them with bludgeoning or bladed tools, but more than a few with guns. They’ve created an inner circle around Brienne, a group of people interrogating her, and an outer circle of fighters who are killing off the zombies that approach. Not many, so far in the farmlands out here, but it looks like Brienne blew up a shed, and the sound and the flames are going to keep drawing them in, especially if the idiots keep shooting at them.

Jaime has one gun. He has one machete. He has one fucking hand.

He crouches down, edging as close to the treeline as he dares, and then he keeps going out into the darkness of the open area. Moving quickly, low, aiming for a patch of wild grass with a few small trees in the middle. Close enough to hear their questions, at least. But when he’s halfway across the yard, he hears a shout, and he looks up, and he sees a boy standing a few feet beyond him. He can’t be older than fifteen, and he’s dressed all in black, like he melted out of the shadow. He has a pistol in one shaking hand, but Jaime knows he isn’t going to use it.

The Jaime who was captured by the Starks and locked away in their dungeon had no qualms about using a young boy to try and get out. He held a blade to the boy’s neck and threatened to throw him off the tower. It wasn’t his finest moment. _This_ Jaime hesitates.

He still probably would have done it eventually; Brienne’s life is on the line. But he hesitates, and it costs him.

Jaime is quickly surrounded. There’s a riot of them in their dark clothes, with their bandanas pulled over their faces. Their weapons flash around him, reflecting the light of the fire. He tries to fight them as best as he can, but they take his gun and knife and they kick him in the ribs until he stops struggling. One of them starts to bind his hands and sees that he’s missing one, and then a few of them laugh at him. They strap his good arm to his chest, wrapping the rope around him and over his shoulder so he can barely feel his fingers, but they leave his stump free.

“What did you think you were going to do, exactly?” one man asks. Tall. Bushy red hair. He shakes his head sadly, gesturing to the pathetic assortment of weapons on the ground. “Get him up.”

They don’t allow Jaime any time to get his feet under him. Just drag him, still fighting, over to Brienne. They throw him on the ground in front of her, face first, and the redhead kneels with his knee on Jaime’s back, pinning him in place. Jaime looks at her, at Brienne, and he sees fury and agony and all the things he knew he would see.

“Alone, you said?” asks a stern man with shaggy black hair going gray. He smiles a little. “Tell me where the girls are.”

“No,” Brienne says.

“We know you have them,” says the boy who discovered Jaime. His voice is reedy with youth but harsh and unforgiving and much older than the rest of him.

“People talk,” the stern man agrees. “And you didn’t leave Vale quietly. A giant bruiser of a woman and her one-handed companion, killing the mayor.” He looks down at them with a falsely friendly smile as the man on Jaime’s back digs his knee in deeper. “And you took those two little girls. The Starks. People talk, and you’ve already lied to us once.”

He must nod at the man on Jaime’s back, because suddenly there is a knife at his throat, and Brienne’s eyes are enormous and terrified.

“We don’t have the girls!” she says. “Can’t you see that?”

“He seems to be doing all right with one hand,” the man on Jaime’s back says. “Maybe we should take the other, too.”

“Please don’t,” Brienne begs. Her eyes are tear-filled for him, and he remembers suddenly that he wasn’t the only one weeping one of those nights when the pain and fever were too much and he just wanted to be held. He remembers her crying, too, sobbing into his shoulder. Apologizing again and again even though she’s the only reason he’s still alive.

“The girls,” the stern man says.

“The Starks can’t give you anything,” Jaime says. His voice is a lot calmer than he would have expected it to be. He turns his head to look at the stern man, and the stern man nods to the redhead on Jaime’s back, and Jaime is suddenly able to breathe. The redhead yanks Jaime up by the hair, forcing him to his knees to look up at the stern man. Jaime swallows his pride and the hundreds of shitty comments that want to rise within him. He grits his teeth and continues, “they barely have enough supplies to feed themselves.”

The stern man glances at the people around him before asking, “and how would you know that?”

“When we left them, they were barely hanging on. I don’t know if they’re even still operational. But if it’s a ransom you’re looking for, the Stark girls aren’t going to fetch it.”

“Then why would you even have them?”

“You’re the one who says we do,” Jaime points out with a grin. That gets him punched by the redheaded giant, but it feels worth it. “The girls are safe,” he says. “You won’t be able to find them. We sent them on with the rest of our group earlier tonight.”

This seems to startle the stern man, and he crouches down so he’s level with Jaime, one eyebrow raising.

“First she’s alone. Then she’s with you. Then you had the girls but sent them away. It’s difficult to tell with you people, and I can only hold my men back for so long. A one-handed man doesn’t survive long out here. A no-handed man…”

“My name is Jaime Lannister,” Jaime says.

“Jaime,” Brienne breathes.

“My father will give you anything you want if you get me back to him at the hospital. The Stark girls are worthless. I’m the one you—” he cuts off with another grunt as the redhead kicks him in the chest and sends him sprawling on his back. Jaime tries to scoot back with only his maimed arm, but the redhead straddles him and holds a knife alarmingly close to his eye.

“Blind and maimed, maybe. Would your father still want you then?”

“Probably not,” Jaime answers weakly. Brienne’s breathing is ragged just behind him.

“Please,” she keeps saying. “Please.” She isn’t tied up, he realizes. Her hands hover around him. One of them, claw-like, fastens on his shoulder. The other grips his hair. “Please don’t.”

“Is he who he says he is?” the stern man asks. Brienne sniffles wetly, and Jaime wishes he was in a mood to tease her for it.

“Yes,” she admits, and the redhead climbs back off him. Brienne pulls Jaime closer, wrapping herself more tightly around him, pulling him to rest against her chest. He’s shaking, he thinks. He tries to pat her leg comfortingly and is annoyed when he realizes that it’s his stump. She doesn’t seem to mind.

“You’d come quietly?” the stern man asks.

“If you let her go, I won’t fight you,” Jaime promises. Brienne doesn’t protest, probably because she knows it’s the only chance they have at protecting the girls. She holds him tighter.

* * *

When they left the clinic, Jaime found that he was weaker than he used to be. A lot weaker, and it had nothing to do with his missing hand. He pushed himself hard the first day until Brienne noticed him lagging. He was furious when she adjusted her pace, slowing down to his.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You’re not,” she replied. “You almost died.”

“And whose fault is that?” Jaime sneered. Brienne looked at him with those big, wounded eyes, and she picked up the pace again.

Later, when she found them an old apartment building to sleep in, he was sweating and shaky and exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” he said when she barred the door and turned to face him. He was sitting on the couch, stale and dusty but good enough for sleeping on. “I was in pain, and I took it out on you. I shouldn’t have done that. I apologize.”

“It’s fine,” she said. She seemed confused that he was still thinking about it, like she hadn’t expected an apology at all.

“You saved my life.”

Brienne paused, and she looked him over. He wondered what she was seeing. There was no doubt of what she saw when they were back at the Stark prison together. She saw a mangy, flea-bitten mess of a man, but he knew she still saw the gold that was hidden beneath it. He had seen the look of surprise and unconscious appreciation on her face. Not an unfamiliar expression to him. On a woman as plain as her, it was almost a guarantee. But now? One-handed, pale, weak, wasted away after so long confined to that clinic. He’s already older than her and a total bastard. Does she see anything good in him anymore?

“I wish there had been another way,” she said.

“I know,” he assured her.

She stared at him a moment longer. He let her, trying not to feel defensive about it. He watched as she took in his stump and his too-baggy clothes and his too-long hair.

“Let me cut your hair and trim your beard,” she finally said.

“So you can see my handsome face again?” he asked with a smile. She rolled her eyes and headed into other bathroom, beckoning him.

She trimmed his hair only enough to get the tangles out, but she cut his beard much closer. He wondered vaguely if he had ever trusted another person as much as he trusted her. She cut off his hand. She cut off his _hand_, and still he tilted his head slightly back to allow her closer to his throat with a blade.

When it was done, she looked him over and nodded.

“Better,” she said, and he didn’t have the heart to make another joke. He just smiled at her, a little lopsided.

* * *

She warmed as they headed off in the direction of Vale. Olenna Tyrell knew the Stark girls vaguely through their mother, and she was sure she had seen them in the care of Petyr Baelish, an apparently odious little man who grew up with Mrs. Stark, and who was last seen headed in Vale’s direction. There were rumors about that town, and about how quickly they had been able to hold off the zombies. A fenced-in paradise. Jaime thought they’d likely find nothing but corpses and a knocked-down fence when they got there, but he would follow Brienne regardless. After the first few days of him making an ass of himself by trying and failing to do basic tasks and always complaining about how much walking they were doing, she started teasing him. Tentative at first, like she wasn’t sure if it was okay. But when he started laughing, she kept up with it.

They exchanged little bits. Memories and old, faded hopes. Jaime started working on the strength of his left arm, and Brienne kept talking about how they should fashion him a hook for his right. When they stopped at night, she always insisted on checking how it was healing, and he knew that she had been worried about him, and about how close he had been to death before.

* * *

“They’ll kill you,” Brienne whispers in his ear as the men confer a few feet away. “Your father won’t...”

“I know,” Jaime admits. “The girls are in a tree, out on the northern road. I…Brienne, I’m...”

“What does Jaime Lannister _want_ with the Stark girls anyway?” asks the stern man suddenly. He’s looking at them, more shrewd than stern for a moment. 

“I just want them and the lady to be safe,” Jaime answers. It’s funny, he thinks. Most people who knew him before, if they could see him now, they would think him entirely changed. They would say that he used to be so wild and feral and untethered. The truth is that Jaime has never been ambitious. He has never wanted much. When he was younger, he did all he did to please his father or his twin. His little brother, too, though Tyrion never asked for much. Now, his heart has shifted, but he still lives for someone other than himself. Brienne and the girls. They’re all that matters now.

“You’re a Lannister,” the man says. “Last we heard, the Lannisters and Starks were at each other’s throats.”

“I’m not that kind of Lannister,” Jaime says, and it is true and honest, and the man smiles a little, and Jaime thinks he must believe it.

“Then I think I owe both of you an apology,” he says. “Because the safety of the girls is why we’re here.”

“And why would you care about two Starklings?” Jaime asks. It’s the boy who steps up, fingers curled into fists. Angry and challenging.

“Because they’re my cousins,” he says.

* * *

It takes some more convincing, because Jaime isn’t about to reveal the location of the girls until he’s sure, and because Brienne is even slower to trust than he is, but then Jon Snow pulls a faded photograph out of his pocket. All of the children are younger in it, and Jaime recognizes Robb holding Bran in his arms. Arya is balanced on Jon’s shoulders while Sansa has an arm tucked through the elbows of both boys, smiling wide. There’s a baby, too, being held by Catelyn. Jaime wonders what happened to the baby.

“My name is Mance,” says the stern man. “Jon and his mother were guests at my camp when the end began. Lyanna didn’t make it, I’m sorry to say, but Jon has proven himself.”

“Camp?” Brienne asks warily. Jaime has to agree.

“Survivalists,” says the redhead proudly.

“Like boy scouts for grown-ups,” suggests a pretty, serious-looking woman with brown hair.

“Survivalists!” the redhead insists. “We survived, didn’t we?”

“We’ve been lucky,” Mance allows with a smile. “And it has allowed us to expand. We were looking to make a deal with the people of Vale, and we arrived in town not long after you left it. We heard what happened between you and their mayor. Jon recognized the names of the girls who were taken, and so we set out.”

“A big team to search for two girls you don’t even know,” Jaime points out. Mance smiles at him patiently.

“We’d hoped our expansion could include the Starks, yes, but more importantly they are Jon’s family, and Jon is _our_ family.”

Jaime looks at him doubtfully, but he knows he’s mostly just sore about how they’ve been absolute dicks to him so far.

“Can you cut him free, please?” Brienne asks. She’s still holding onto him, like she means to snatch him away from the redheaded giant if he tries to put out Jaime’s eyes again. Her forearm is tight around his chest. It’s not unwelcome.

The redhead looks to Mance for permission. When it’s given in the form of a nod, he crouches down and cuts the rope. Jaime’s a bit surprised he doesn’t “accidentally” cut Jaime’s throat along with it.

“Sorry about all this,” the giant says. He holds out his hand to Brienne, and he helps her up. She seems surprised by the gesture. When she’s on her feet, she pulls her hand away, suspicion on her face, and she bends down to help Jaime. The giant continues. “We just had to be sure. You fought like a madwoman, though.”

“You were trying to kill me,” Brienne reminds him.

“Yeah, but you didn’t make it easy.”

He grins at her as if they’re sharing a joke, and Brienne looks…

Amused. Brienne looks genuinely _amused_. Jaime feels more insulted and wounded by this than he has ever felt in his _life_.

* * *

“Did you really do all those things for your sister?” Brienne asked one night. They were sharing a bed. It felt like an odd time to ask. He had been talking about something. Babbling, the way he did. She cut him off, turning over her shoulder to look at him. It was this shitty motel bed, the mattress lumpy and hard, and she’d mocked him for being a pampered idiot, even though he knew that she was secretly relived that he was complaining about normal things. Better than complaining about his hand and the fact that he felt useless now.

“I did,” he admitted. He was, he thought, understandably wary of this line of questioning. “Why?”

“I thought maybe you were just saying it to get a rise out of me.”

He snorted a little. He couldn’t fault her for that impression.

“No,” he said. “I would have done anything she asked. I _did_, for a long time. I ruined peoples’ lives. I planted evidence. I would have killed people, if it came to it. Our relationship was never healthy, obviously. Neither of us were ever healthy. I thought it was the _point_ of me.”

“What, helping her?”

“Helping her. Loving her. Giving her whatever she wanted.”

“Not much of a purpose.”

“It was enough for me for a long time.”

“What happened?”

“She died.”

“You said you were estranged.”

“Did I?” He hardly remembered. He hadn’t exactly been in his right mind at the time. “She was married. They were talking about children. She wanted to move on with her life, and that meant seeing me less. She always used me like a weapon, and I think as she got more excited at the thought of motherhood, she had trouble reconciling…I don’t know. The weapon she created with the family she wanted. She cut me loose.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For prying.”

“Why? Because I told you the truth? I know it’s horrible. Growing up, I don’t think I ever gave it much thought. I would have done anything to make Cersei smile. We were so good at pretending that we were above everyone else. That we were _different_. Cersei told me we were the same person in two bodies. She told me that we were made for each other. It all sounded right to me. Our family was a mess. My father was cold, and his standards for us unforgiving. We were raised by a succession of indifferent nannies. Everything in that house was cold, but not Cersei. Cersei and I were warm.” He could hear Brienne breathing, and he wondered if he had put her to sleep.

“Children raised like that…you were all she had. It makes sense.”

“It did,” Jaime said, surprised by her quiet voice. “It did make sense.” He had to continue, admitting, “until it stopped making sense. Until I realized that I was the only one who still needed…”

He trailed off, unsure what he even meant to say. Comfort? The warmth? Love? He left it there. Brienne turned over fully so she could look at him in the dark. Her eyes shone with something almost fierce.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, only this time he knew it wasn’t a personal apology. It was just...empathy. Maybe pity. That would have angered him once, but he found himself clinging to it now.

“It’s over,” he said. He would never say it aloud, but sometimes he was relieved Cersei was dead. She never would have lasted out here, and he would have killed himself trying to protect her. Brienne would be alone out here, trying to find two girls who might not even be alive anymore. Cersei never would have thought to cut off his hand. She would have left him there. She would have hated him for getting bit in the first place.

“It’s over,” she repeated. He tried to give her a real smile. He wasn’t sure it worked, but she smiled back.

“I’m with you now,” he said, and he saw the way her expression went briefly soft and open before it shuttered away. She turned her back again.

“Goodnight, Jaime,” she said.

* * *

Maybe the problem is that when you’ve grown up either being emotionally neglected and manipulated by your twin sister, or you’ve been a soldier fighting a war you don’t believe in alongside a bunch of people who _do _believe, you don’t learn the kinds of social cues that most adults pick up on. How to tell if someone’s interested. How to tell if interest just means aesthetic appreciation of what Jaime knows are objectively good features or if it means that Brienne actually wants him to kiss her. Jaime thought he knew the answer. He thought she was oblivious to his yearning while she went pining away after him on her own. The kiss was meant to _show_ her.

She clung to him when they threatened him. She was desperate to save him. But now she stands apart from him, aloof, and he can just _see_ something tense within her. She doesn’t look at him. She chats with the people who were trying to kill them, and she avoids him—_him—_as if he’s the one who did a terrible thing. And, fuck, maybe he _is_. He kissed her. He left the girls. He’s an idiot who never thinks that he might have to _explain_ things, even though he should know by now that Brienne isn’t like Cersei. The things that worked with his sister aren’t going to work with her, because that’s how life works! Because people aren’t supposed to just obsessively care for their twins and exclude everyone else in their lives!

He’s in a spiral of doubt and annoyance and a bit of desperation by the time they reach the road. He jogs ahead because he feels some stupid compulsion to be useful, and he finds the tree. He chose it because it would be easy to identify, but it would be easy to find even without the careful choice, because Arya is already half out of it.

“Jaime!” she practically shrieks, because the idiot child _still_ hasn’t learned the value of a quiet voice when zombies are around. But then she sprints for him and leaps at him, forcing him to catch her, and he forgets to be annoyed when she’s hugging him like she missed him. “I didn’t mean to call you a coward!”

Jaime laughs, and he’s surprised at how _happy_ it makes him feel, to know that she was worried about him.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Brienne’s fine. You were supposed to stay in the tree until I gave you the signal! What if we were taken captive?”

“You weren’t, though,” Arya argues, like _he’s_ the idiot.

“Be _quiet_, please,” he says, putting her down abruptly and spinning her by the shoulders to look at the others. “But look who we…”

“_Jon_!” Arya screams. There’s an answering scream of delight from the tree as Sansa tries to hurry in her careful, delicate climbing. Jaime curses and hurries over to help her down so she can follow her younger sister, both of them tackling their cousin into the dirt.

So they haven’t gotten them back to their mother yet, and Jon’s little more than a child himself, but Jaime feels a bit of pride when he sees the girls with their family. He’s so used to being a menace and a disappointment and a man with a terrible reputation. He isn’t used to _helping_.

The sun is just barely starting to come up, and when he turns to find Brienne, she seems brighter than she usually does. Her eyes are wide, her expression gentle. She smiles over at him, too.


	4. I don't wanna know who I am without you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so this one's a bit short because the last chapter was an awkward length and I split it into two! However it's MOSTLY feelings, as a bonus, so yay!

Half of the people who traveled with Mance decide to head back to their camp to update the people they left behind, but the other half decide to accompany Brienne and Jaime and the girls back to the Starks. Despite Jaime’s earlier good points about the Starks not having a lot of resources to make a deal with, Mance would rather align himself with Catelyn than Tywin. Not the worst choice, Jaime has to admit. Mance brings Jon with him, along with the serious brunette woman, Karsi, the giant redheaded man, Tormund, and a few other people who don’t matter.

Really, Tormund’s the _only_ one that matters, because Jaime hates Tormund immediately.

It isn’t just that Tormund humiliated him by tying up his one hand and laughing at him while he did it. It isn’t also just that Tormund held a knife to his throat and threatened to put out his eyes. Those are all, Jaime would argue, perfectly good reasons to hate someone, and Jaime would hate him even if Tormund didn’t also _instantly_ start flirting with Brienne.

Jaime had started to feel about Brienne the way he imagines insufferable hipsters who only eat at trendy places feel when they discover one of those trendy places that all their friends haven’t discovered yet. Like she’s this treasure that he’s been all puffed up with pride about discovering, because he’s the only one who knows it. The rest of the world is busy eating at easier places to find, or places with a better storefront, or whatever the appropriate analogy is.

The point is that Brienne isn’t necessarily to everyone’s tastes, but she’s wonderful, and amazing, and Jaime still wouldn’t necessarily look at her and call her _beautiful_. Not in the way that people usually mean it. But he thinks she’s beautiful in a deeper sense, just by virtue of being _her_. Like, to a corny, ridiculous level. And along comes this redheaded giant who spots Brienne’s worth _right away_. Tormund doesn’t need to be bitten by a zombie and have his hand hacked off. He doesn’t need Brienne to hold him and show him gentleness and care when the rest of his life has been so empty of it. Tormund doesn’t need to be yelled at and insulted across half the fucking city before he realizes that he likes her.

The most annoying thing, the thing that bothers Jaime more than the rest of it, is that Tormund likes Brienne _for_ her looks. He likes that she’s tall and muscular. He likes that her face is always in some sort of mighty scowl. He likes the grimy parts of her that Jaime was so turned off by at first. Jaime has this petulant little feeling. Like it’s not _his_ fault he’s never really been attracted to anyone before and it took him a little while to realize that he’s attracted to _her_ beyond what her face looks like.

There’s something absolutely horrible about watching Tormund flirt with Brienne. Because she doesn’t seem to _like_ it, necessarily, but she also doesn’t tell him off or tell him to go away. She watches him with vague annoyance, but it’s the same way she used to look at Jaime, too, back when she hated him. Back when she used to look at him at all and didn’t just avoid his eye constantly.

And Jaime just keeps reminding himself that she changed her mind on _him_, once. She’s obviously not too pleased with him at the moment, but she used to loathe him, and now she doesn’t, and she could change her mind on fucking _Tormund_, too, and Tormund’s not an idiot who took too long to realize how great Brienne is.

* * *

They walk all through the morning, and well into the afternoon, and Brienne doesn’t say more than a few words to him the entire time. She laughs with Mance. She has a long discussion about sustainable resources with Karsi. She puts up with Tormund’s grandiose stories. Jaime walks ahead or lingers behind and tries to listen and occasionally to interject, but Brienne always stares at him blankly and says very neutral things until he gives up and slinks away.

Finally, Arya approaches him and lifts her arms like a toddler.

“Carry me,” she says. She may be a tiny child, short for her age, but she has this terrifying glint to her eyes, and he imagines she only acts like a baby when she’s trying to get someone to let their guard down.

“Ask Brienne. She has both hands,” Jaime mutters, somehow resisting the urge to look back and try and catch Brienne’s eye again. It hasn’t worked the three other times he’s tried it in the past hour. He can hear Tormund bragging about facing off against a bear.

“Carry me,” Arya says again. Jaime sighs and picks her up. She’s not a large child, but she’s still bigger than he expected.

“Seven hells,” he groans. “You know, my legs are tired, too, and you don’t hear me complaining about it.”

“Why’s Brienne talking with him?” Arya hisses, yanking on his hair so he has to turn and finds himself looking back at Tormund and Brienne and Sansa. Sansa’s looking at Jaime and Arya with a mighty frown on her face, and she keeps glancing at Tormund and then back at Jaime again. She couldn’t be screaming _do something_ louder if she shouted it.

“I don’t know why she’s talking to him,” Jaime says, ignoring Sansa. “You’d have to ask Brienne.”

“You kissed her.”

“I remember.”

“I mean, seven hells. Even I know what that means, and I’m only eight.”

“You’re _eight_?”

“Of course I’m eight. How old did you think I was?”

“I don’t know. Ten?”

Arya nods, smiling to herself as if two years is so much more mature.

“Sansa’s ten,” she says. “It’s why she’s bigger.”

“How old do you think _I_ am?” he asks.

“I don’t know. A thousand. Older than my mum.”

Jaime laughs loudly enough to draw the attention of Brienne, who frowns at them both. Jaime, feeling in the mood to be a bit of a shit, hits Brienne with his most charming smile. He’s not sure how Brienne feels about children in general, but hopefully she wants them or at least feels that flutter of something at the sight of him holding a child. That’s a thing, right? Even if the child is eight and is also yanking on his hair, still?

“Older than your mum,” he says, shaking his head.

“Well, I don’t know. Old. But you’re _loads_ prettier than stupid Tormund, so I don’t get it.”

“_Thank_ you,” he says. “At least I’ve got you on my side. What does Sansa think?”

Arya gives him a knowing look that makes him laugh again. He can’t believe that an eight year old’s support is making him feel so good about himself. This is pathetic. He has reached a new low.

“She’s been moaning about it all day,” Arya mutters. “Tormund’s beard and Tormund’s stupid coat and Tormund’s jokes aren’t funny. Do you _have_ to act stupid when you’re a grown-up? If Brienne wants to get all silly and swoony about you, I don’t see why she doesn’t just _do_ it. You’re all silly and swoony about her, too.”

“I thought I made that pretty obvious, yeah,” Jaime says.

“So why is she acting so _weird_ about it?”

It’s a genuine question, Jaime realizes. It makes him want to laugh, but he’s pretty sure Arya would literally punch him if he did, so he doesn’t. And, anyway, he’s not sure what he has to laugh about. He’s still the one left bewildered and a bit hurt, and he doesn’t know the answer to her question, anyway.

“Maybe she still thinks I’m going to leave her and join my father,” he offers.

“Are you?”

“No. I already told her, but she…I don’t know. Doesn’t believe me.”

“I believe you,” Arya says, managing to sound angry about it, like he’s dragging the concession out of her.

“Your support means the world,” he says. Sarcastic and shitty like it’s a total joke, even though it isn’t.

* * *

When they finally stop, it’s in an old parking garage. Easily the most terrible idea Jaime’s heard since the apocalypse started, but it’s harder to find a secure location for twelve people than it was for two, or even four. Jaime looks at Brienne and sees that she looks about as pleased as he does. She locks eyes with him, finally. Hers are narrowed in contemplation, but they go a little wide when she spots him.

When he looks at her pointedly enough, she wanders over. She looks vaguely contrite.

“We can’t sleep here,” he says.

“Mance says they sleep in places like this all the time. We just need to have watches.”

“Great. That way someone wakes us up just in time to be chowed on.”

“They’ve survived this long on their own. They must at least have _some_ idea.”

Brienne is defensive, and standoffish, and half angled away from him already. Jaime’s desperate, so he reaches out to her. Catching her by the sleeve with his left hand. Only hand.

“Brienne,” he says. Sighing. He hardly has any clue what he’s going to say beyond her name, but it stops her from leaving. He sighs again. “Look, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable? You were almost killed. I _told_ you to take the girls and leave, but you never listen. You always think you know best. Jaime, you can’t...”

She stops herself before she can say anything too horrible, and he knows she would have found a way to say it gently even if she _did_ say it, but...

_You can’t protect yourself anymore. _

_You can’t protect anyone anymore. _

_You’re a helpless, old, one-handed fool who fancied himself a knight in a story and almost got us both killed for it, you fucking idiot. _

Brienne would never. Brienne doesn’t. It doesn’t matter.

“Right,” he says. She hears the defeat in his tone, and what comes next over her face is pity.

“Jaime, I didn’t...”

“No,” he says. “You didn’t have to. You’re right.”

Her hand covers his on her arm, but that’s too much. Too soft and gentle and fucking _kind_. When he met her and spent those first days desperately trying to tear her down, he could never have imagined this. This horrid pang of rejection. For years, he was the one who did the rejecting, except with Cersei. Cersei was the only woman he loved enough to cause him pain. But Brienne...

“Jaime,” she says again. “I took first watch. Can you…?”

“I’ll watch the girls,” he says. He tries not to sound harsh, but he doesn’t quite manage it, judging from the way Brienne cringes back. He tries again, gentler. “I’ll leave a place for you.”

She nods, and he finally wanders away.

She doesn’t find them at any point that night, even though her sleeping bag is laid out next to his. Jaime lies awake, listening. The zombies moan sometimes, and in the city the sound echoes, and they always sound closer than they are. Arya and Sansa are curled up together on one side of him. Brienne never fills the space beside him on the other. He doesn’t know where she sleeps, if she sleeps at all. He certainly doesn’t.

* * *

By the time they reached Vale, they had been on the road for nearly two weeks.

After he lost his hand, they spent those days too close. She was too careful with him. In those two weeks after leaving the city, they found a rhythm that never approached the brutal back and forth of before, but which had aged into fondness and care. Still an undercurrent of antagonism, but gentler. Kinder. He knew he was relying too much on her. She helped him with everything. It became instinct for her to be his second hand, and he kept thinking about what would happen when they parted.

By the time they reached the little walled-in town, the solution seemed obvious: they wouldn’t part.

It wasn’t just because she was helpful. He knew that as soon as he got back home, his father would have a whole army of people ready to make Jaime’s life as easy as possible, if only so Jaime didn’t accidentally bring Tywin any shame by fumbling with his buttons or failing to cut up his food with his one hand. There would likely be a prosthetic in his future, too. Nothing useful, but it would look good. Tywin might insist he start wearing gloves so that no one could tell the difference.

If it was just about convenience, the hospital would be the answer. His father. But it isn’t about convenience at all. It’s just _Brienne_. He wants to be with her. Even before the zombies came, the world was a shit place. Ever since Aerys, maybe, Jaime’s approach had been one of disdainful cynicism. Brienne was different. She made him _feel_ different. He wanted to be with her.

Vale was a small town. Brienne thought it an odd choice for a man with Baelish’s apparent ambitions to choose as a home base, but Jaime understood. Baelish was exactly the sort of person who would prefer to be a big fish in a small pond until well after he had outgrown said pond.

“He’ll make sure that every deck is stacked in his favor,” he said quietly to Brienne as they approached the gate of the makeshift fence that had been erected around the town. “Always be on the defensive with him. Never think you’re ahead. You might be. He’s not the genius people think he is, according to my father. But he thrives best when people underestimate him, so you need to just always assume he’s winning and plan on how to get around him.”

Brienne looked at him with genuine surprise and then nodded.

“Thank you, Jaime,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Even a one-handed moron is good for something,” Jaime said, deflecting her praise. She shook her head.

“_Jaime_. I mean it. Thank you.”

* * *

They’re three blocks from the hospital when Mance says, “we could swing by and drop you off, if you wanted.”

Jaime’s a bit startled when he realizes that Mance is talking to him. He’d been straining to hear the whispered conversation between Sansa and Brienne behind him.

“Where?” he asks, stupidly, before realizing. “Oh. No. Gods. I’m with them.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea.”

Brienne’s voice is quiet, but it’s steady, too.

Jaime turns and looks at her.

She’s blushing. Red-cheeked and squaring off. Knowing very well that he’s going to take it poorly and yet saying it anyway.

“What?” he asks.

“It might be better if you went back to your father,” she says.

In the stunned silence that follows, Mance manages to politely shoo the rest of his people on ahead to give Jaime and Brienne some privacy. Jon leads Sansa away and tries to tug Arya along with them, but Arya squirms out of his grasp and runs back.

“He can do anything without his stupid hand!” she says in a voice only _just _above a whisper, blessedly. “Me and Sansa can help him if you’re too busy with _Tormund_ to do it!”

“Arya,” Jaime warns. Brienne looks as if she’s been slapped.

“You _can’t_ send him away!” Arya insists. She stamps her foot and glares and folds her arms across her chest. “If he goes, I’m going with him.”

As touched and confused as Jaime is by her defense, he can’t think of a worse idea.

“No,” he says, trying to sound firm. “You’re going back to your mother. Believe me. You don’t want to meet my father.”

“How could I be scared of someone older than _you_?” Arya demands.

“I wasn’t,” Brienne interrupts weakly. “Arya, it’s not…Jaime.”

“It’s fine,” Jaime tells her. It’s not, but what’s he going to do? Throw a fit about it? She’s right, anyway.

“It’s not because of his hand,” Brienne insists to Arya. She turns those piercing eyes on him again, willing him to understand. “It isn’t.”

“Is it because you’d rather kiss Tormund? Because that’s _way _worse,” Arya says. “Me and Sansa still want Jaime around even if you don’t! You can’t take him away from us just because you don’t want to kiss him. Karsi can kiss him if you don’t want to! She’s pretty!”

“_Arya_,” Brienne hisses, but Jaime can’t help but laugh. He’s never wanted children before, but Arya’s slowly making him change his mind.

“What? It’s true. Jaime’s nicer _and_ prettier _and_ you already like him! But if you won’t do it, there are loads of girls who will!”

“She’s making some valid points,” Jaime says, still laughing.

“Arya, let me talk to Jaime for a second, _please_,” Brienne says. Her redness now is of a shade previously unknown to man, and Jaime would be more pleased if he wasn’t so deeply unhappy. When Arya gives Brienne another warning look and leaves, he feels wounded already. Pre-hurt by whatever she’s going to say. “It isn’t because of your hand,” she says. Jaime sighs. “It isn’t.”

“Then what? Is it because I didn’t listen to you when you wanted to sacrifice yourself so nobly so me and the girls could get away? Because I won’t apologize for…”

“You were almost _killed_!” she exclaims, aghast. “Worse, they almost maimed you again just to get answers from me.”

“_Tormund_ almost maimed me,” Jaime feels the need to point out.

“Yes, Tormund. I don’t know what it is about Tormund that makes you think…I don’t know why you’d think I...” She takes a deep, injured breath, and she grits her teeth, and she says, “I don’t know Tormund, Jaime. I don’t have feelings for him. I care about _you_, and you almost got yourself killed, and I can’t be responsible for you like that. I can’t do it.”

“You took me into your custody once.”

“When I hated you.”

“We’re so close to the Starks, Brienne. We’re so close. And you know my father. You know I wouldn’t be any safer with him.”

“And if Catelyn tries to use you against him? If she orders me to shoot you?”

“Would you?” Jaime asks, instead of the much more sensible ‘she wouldn’t’ that he should probably say.

“No,” Brienne answers. It doesn’t look like she gives it much thought, either.

“Then what’s the problem?” he asks. He’s tired, suddenly. Tired of wondering and tired of hoping. “You think it’s easy for me? Watching you run off and take all the risks because I can’t take any of them? But you don’t see me trying to pawn you off on the nearest safe place. Send you running home.”

“Jaime...” she sighs.

“I kissed you because I wanted to, and I wanted to because I care about you. I worry about you. I want you to be safe.” She’s gaping at him now, staring at him. “What did you _think_ it was about?”

“I don’t know,” Brienne admits. “Desperation?”

“It was. To see you safe!” Jaime sighs and rolls his eyes to the heavens. “At least tell me if it’s a lost cause. I…”

“A lost cause?” Brienne asks. She’s incredulous, staring at him. “_Me_?”

“Yes, you. Who else?”

“Your sister.”

Brienne’s voice is low, whispered, dangerous because it’s also half apology. He can feel his expression shuttering, and he can see the way she cringes back. She looks panicked, like she thinks she said too much.

“My sister is dead,” he reminds her. “And we weren’t...it wasn’t like that. It was too much, it wasn’t normal, but it wasn’t _that. _Is that it? You think I’m trying to replace her? Or are you just too disgusted with the things I…”

“No,” Brienne says quickly.

“Maybe you should be.”

“I’m not.”

“What is it, then? Is it because I’m a total prick? Admittedly you might have…”

“Why me?” Brienne asks. Quickly, her tone sharp and aggravated. Filled with malice. “Why _me_? I don’t understand. I know what I look like. We both do.”

“I don’t know how to make it more clear that I like the way you look,” Jaime admits quietly. He feels like a child again, asking out the girl he has a crush on. Then again, he sort of _is_ a child in this. “I wouldn’t lie to you about this. I kissed you because I wanted to. I wanted to because I _like _you. I know I said cruel things to you before, but that was before I knew you. Before I saw you fully. I’m not the same person I was.”

Brienne’s lips thin a little at that, seemingly in reluctant acknowledgement.

“It isn’t easy for me,” she says.

For all she knows about Jaime, Jaime knows so little of her life before. He knows that’s by design. Another way to keep herself apart from him to prepare for the moment he leaves, he supposes. But he knows enough to know that she’s had experiences that make him want to break someone’s face.

“I know,” he says. “It isn’t easy for me to admit vulnerability, either.”

“Vulnerability?” Brienne asks.

“I almost cried when you didn’t come to bed last night.”

Brienne sucks in a sharp breath at Jaime’s words. She looks at him with dawning realization.

“You’re serious.”

“I am,” he says.

She hesitates. Considers. Narrows her eyes. Hesitates again. Finally, she lunges forward and captures his lips with hers.

Jaime’s already grinning against her mouth, which he knows she’ll pretend to be annoyed by because he’s smug and infuriating. He can’t help it, though. He can’t. She’s kissing him.

She has one hand fisted in the front of his jacket, and she’s pulling him closer, and if she shoved him against the nearest wall he might just propose marriage to her, but she’s gentler than she was before. Nervous still. Somehow. That this might be the wrong thing to do. He makes sure she believes it. He’s enthusiastic in his kisses. He stands on his toes and presses up against her. _Believe me,_ he thinks. Absurdly. _Believe this. Please. _

She’s the one to break the kiss, of course. Left to Jaime, they’d keep kissing until the zombies came, but Brienne has always been more practical.

She stares down at him. He waits, breathing heavy.

“All right,” she says. She sounds confused, but not unhappy. “Okay.”

“All right? Okay?” he smothers a laugh.

“It’s…not what I expected to happen. Shut up.”

He’s laughing, and he can’t help it. The sun is warm, and Brienne kissed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think i've ever talked about my Karsi feelings before, but I was so into Karsi and her whole jam, and when she stopped fighting at Hardhome because she saw those little kid wights, I picked up my phone and texted my friend "could GOT not get like a SINGLE woman in the writer's room because what the FUCK". I thought I was over it, but it turns out I am not. So shoutout to Karsi, who was really cool until the writers decided that "mother" being a personality trait meant she wouldn't fight like hell to get back to her actual kids, instead freezing up at the sight of child-wights and going out like a punk.


	5. there are things I thought I could rise above

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here's the final chapter! Featuring "you need two hands to make a snowball" because i could NOT resist!

Once they were allowed inside Vale, even without Brienne mentioning that they had come from the Starks, they were given a place to wash up before a dinner that was promised to be with Baelish and the girls. A private dinner. It was obviously a trap, but Jaime wasn’t sure how Baelish knew, or what the point of it was. He also knew that Brienne was going to do something stupidly honorable like tell Baelish the truth _right away_. It would be a mistake, and he reminded her twice as they got ready that she should leave the talking to him, but he knew she wasn’t going to.

Baelish had claimed the nicest house for himself in his new role as “Mayor” of Vale. It was decorated in a style that Tywin Lannister always hated because he thought it made the owners look too desperate to flaunt their wealth. Jaime wasn’t usually one to agree with his father, but seeing Baelish’s smug face surrounded by all the unnecessarily gilded surfaces _did _give a certain impression.

Jaime sat beside Brienne at the dinner table, and he watched her. She looked different, scrubbed clean and wearing the new clothing provided by Baelish and his people. Men’s clothing, and still a little too small, but she looked good like that, clean and warm. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail that made her look more severe, with her pale blonde waves of hair contained. Without the dirt and grime of the road, it was easier to see the bruises and scrapes that littered her arms. She was in a tank top, and her muscles were well defined and gloriously on display, but Jaime felt absurdly protective of her. Scared for her. This wasn’t what she was used to. Baelish, his kind of people. The people Jaime had grown up with. Brienne could fight her way out of any situation, but he still remembered the awkward, stilted way she spoke to the gang of men who had cornered them. Her deep voice speaking of tasks and honor and oaths. She was too _good_ for Baelish’s kind of petty maneuvering. She was too straightforward. If she wasn’t careful, Baelish would eat her alive.

Only one of the Stark girls was at dinner with them, though they had been promised both. Sansa was thin and pale, but well behaved. She darted looks between Brienne and Jaime and then Baelish again. Her looks towards Jaime were less than charitable, and he knew that Baelish had done already what Baelish did best: begun the process of poisoning her with lies about the people who had come to take her away. Even Tywin had been thwarted by him a time or two in the social circles. Jaime wished he had listened more when Cersei complained about him. She always had better insight than their father into what men like Baelish wanted.

“It was good of you to come,” Baelish said to Brienne, as if Jaime wasn’t there. “Though the last I heard, you were meant to be organizing a trade, not backpacking through the apocalypse with the sworn enemy of the Starks.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Jaime asked. He wasn’t sure how Baelish had heard about the trade way out here, but it didn’t matter. He was just trying to show off how much he knew, because he knew it would unbalance Brienne. Jaime had to keep Baelish focused on him. Brienne had protected him. Shielded him. Kept him from harm. It was time for him to do the same for her.

“Dramatic?” Baelish asked. “Why, it was your interference that led to Ned Stark’s death, unless I’ve been misinformed.”

“Fortunately for all of us, you’ve been misinformed,” Jaime said, still with a pleasant smile. He looked at Sansa with his most sincere expression. “I had nothing to do with your father’s death. The first time I laid eyes on the prison, your mother had already taken it over. I was her prisoner for a time. Despite that, I have to admit she’s a lovely woman. She could have treated me much worse than she did.”

Baelish’s smile got sharper. Jaime wondered if he should start tallying points. Cersei used to do that. Treat conversations like they were sparring. Fencing, almost. Polite, orderly combat. One hit met with another.

“Cat and I are old friends. When I realized how close I was to the school her daughters attended, I thought I would stop by and see if they were all right. Thank the gods I did.”

“Yes,” Sansa said quickly. She smiled. “We’re safe here with Uncle Petyr.”

Brienne was looking at Jaime. He could see it out of the corner of his eye. He nodded slightly, not daring to look away from Baelish, but wanting Brienne to know he’d noticed.

“So you see,” Baelish continued, smiling indulgently down at Sansa in a way that made Jaime’s blood freeze a bit in his veins. “There was no need for Cat to try and make a deal with your people. Tywin Lannister never set eyes on the girls.”

Jaime could see that Brienne had her fingers wrapped around the dulled butter knife she had been given for her food. He reached out without thinking and covered her hand. _Knowing _her. Understanding that her blank expression couldn’t hide coiled muscles or the faint air of danger around her. She met his eye, and he shook his head.

“I knew that, of course,” he said. He smiled back at Baelish. “My father is a mystery to many people, but not to me. He wanted me to overpower Brienne and return to him to inform him about the state of the prison. Better chance of escape if I was out of the cells, he assumed. Obviously, he didn’t realize who I’d be saddled with.” He grinned at Brienne, and he saw her confused expression in return.

“You seem to have formed quite the bond.” Baelish’s eyes were on Jaime’s hand, still on Brienne’s. Jaime didn’t move it, not wanting to look caught off balance. Just stared back at Baelish, waiting. “Forgive me for being suspicious, but the safety of the girls is my greatest concern. Lannister friends don’t make a convincing argument, Ms. Tarth. How do I know you haven’t gone over to Tywin entirely? I could understand the temptation Mr. Lannister might present to a young woman such as yourself.”

Brienne seemed genuinely startled by that, which made Jaime want to laugh. She snatched her hand back and sat up straighter.

“We were attacked on the way to make the exchange at the hospital,” she said, wounded. She addressed her plea to Baelish and Sansa both. “Jaime made the decision to help me find the girls. He _told_ me that his father didn’t have them.”

“You have to admit it’s a less-than-convincing story,” Baelish said. Sansa was looking back at Jaime, her expression wavering. She was afraid of Baelish. Jaime could tell. Good at hiding it, but she was afraid. But she was afraid of Jaime and Brienne, too. It was a monumental decision for a child to make: who should she trust when she didn’t think there were any good options?

“Why is it unconvincing?” Jaime asked.

“Because you’re Jaime Lannister,” Baelish said, as if it was obvious. “Tywin’s son and heir. You’ve been involved in a number of disreputable things in your lifetime for the sake of your family. And I’ve known Tywin a long time. He’s not the type of person you go against for no reason.”

Jaime laughed. It was true, after all. He never would have gone against his father before meeting Brienne.

“No,” he agreed, pleasantly. “He isn’t. But then again, neither is Catelyn Stark.”

Baelish laughed, and gestured, and suddenly everything was going wrong at once. Three men seized Brienne. Two seized Jaime. They both fought against their captors, but it was impossible. They were already weak and slow and tired from days on the move, and these men were strong and well-fed. They also had knives.

They were taken from the room as Sansa pleaded with Baelish, trying to convince him that he should listen to them a bit more. “I want to go home”, she kept saying. “Maybe they can tell us more. _Please_.”

Then they were outside, and there was a fenced area below them, off the porch on the side of the building. A long drop down to a pit where there was a horde of zombies waiting. What _was _it with villainous men and zombie pets? Jaime dug in his heels, spinning to evade the grasping hands of the men who pushed him.

“What do you want?” he asked Baelish. There had to be something. Sansa was sobbing behind Baelish, in the doorway, trying to tug on his arm, begging him not to do it. Brienne was eyeing the zombies below like they were a puzzle she was trying to solve. “There must be something.”

“Your father has refused my requests to be included in his empire. Vale has crops, and an abundance of engineers. I could be useful to him. I want him to look past our former antagonism and consider the future of his people.”

“Fine, yes, of course,” Jaime said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Will you?” Baelish asked. Jaime had always hated people like him. Squirming social climbers who thought they knew how to engage with people like Tywin Lannister. People who thought they were cleverer than they were, more important than they were, and who would revel in the chance to make someone a Lannister squirm.

“Yes,” Jaime said. His voice was pleading. Almost begging. “Please, Baelish. See reason.”

Baelish nodded, and the men holding Jaime released him. 

“You can always trust a Lannister to save his own skin,” Baelish said aside to Sansa, like it was some grand life lesson. The girl was nodding desperately, thanking him for listening. Baelish turned to look past Jaime and nodded, and Jaime turned to smile at Brienne and found that the men were still pushing her to the edge.

“No!” he yelled, but one of the men shoved Brienne squarely in the back, and she fell.

Jaime lunged to get past them, but one stopped him with an arm around his middle, like he was an unruly child. Baelish was speaking, trying to get him to be calm, reminding him that she was never going to be loyal to anyone if she had already switched allegiances once. Jaime grabbed the gun from the holster of the man who was holding him, and he flung it into the ring, screaming Brienne’s name. He managed to haul back and punch the man, but it was his left fist, and it was an uncoordinated punch at best. More surprising than painful. Surprising enough to make the brute let go, at least.

There was a tall bucket filled with sharpened wooden broom handles, like a security system in case the zombies broke loose, and Jaime grabbed one as he shoved past the men and jumped down into the pit. Brienne had just got her hands on the gun, and she opened fire on the encroaching horde.

“Brienne!” he yelled, and she turned to look at him with horror as he hurried to her side. They traded weapons without speaking.

“Get them up!” Baelish was yelling, seeing his chance for an alliance with Tywin Lannister fading quickly. Jaime pulled Brienne back towards the wall, and he gestured for her to climb on his back. She took out several zombies with well-placed strikes to the head with her broom handle before she finally climbed up on him and reached for the hands of the same man who had followed Baelish’s order to push her. Jaime followed as soon as she was up, and Brienne grabbed his hand and pulled him to safety before the grasping fingers of the zombies below could get too much of a hold on his clothing.

Brienne wasted no time once Jaime was on his feet. She whirled on Baelish, her pointed stick at the ready, and found that he had a knife held to Sansa’s neck.

Jaime knew that it was a bluff. He knew because he recognized something terrible and wanting in Baelish’s expression, and he knew that keeping Sansa Stark in his possession was the most important thing. Cersei always said to identify that in any interaction with people like him. _What’s the thing he wants most? What’s the number one thing he won’t risk losing?_

But Brienne didn’t know that, and Jaime had no time to tell her. She didn’t bother to pause and pull back or plead with Baelish for Sansa’s life. She didn’t follow the rules Jaime thought she would. She didn’t follow the rules Baelish apparently assumed she would. She shoved the broom handle straight through his throat.

Baelish was choking on his own blood when he hit the ground, and Jaime and Brienne fought back to back to hold off the others until one man—a guard who probably saw the opportunity to fill this new power vacuum himself—stopped the rest and told Jaime and Brienne to go, that they should leave before anyone else found out. Sansa went to fetch Arya in the room where she had been kept because she refused to behave according to Baelish’s standards. She fetched their things, too, shoved hastily into two backpacks, and she thanked Brienne and Jaime over and over again until Brienne gently told her that she didn’t have to.

* * *

There’s smoke, over the buildings.

It could be any of the buildings. A lot of the abandoned ones caught fire in the days immediately after the beginning of the end, and it’s still not rare for fires to break out at random. It might also be someone burning bodies. That’s the best way to get rid of them, just in case. To make sure they’re dead and to make sure that they _stay _dead. 

But Jaime locks eyes with Brienne over the heads of Sansa and Arya between them, and Brienne nods, and Jaime’s stomach fills with dread. This heavy, sinking certainty.

Mance leads the party the rest of the way to the prison with Tormund and Karsi and Brienne and Jaime. Arya is fierce in her fear and in her desire to go with them, but Jon and Sansa promise they’ll watch her.

They leave the kids and the rest of Mance’s people in an apartment building just a few blocks from the prison. Far enough that they can’t see what’s happened.

* * *

Brienne was right: the smoke _is _coming from the prison. The wall around the front yard has been completely demolished. The doors are all hanging open. Everywhere on the grass, there are bodies. Some are torn apart, clearly the work of zombies, but some are riddled with bullet holes. Brienne goes white and quiet. She holds her gun limply and doesn’t respond when Jaime tries to tell her that she doesn’t have to look.

Whatever happened here, it happened recently. A few hours. A day, maybe. Two at the most. The fires are smoldering, but they’re still burning.

“Big group did this,” Mance says, unconcerned. He looks at Jaime, one eyebrow raised.

“No,” Jaime says, though he knows it’s true. “No, shit. I’m.”

He wants to retch and gag and beg for forgiveness, but he can’t. He can only stare. The bombed out building and the bodies. Who else has the resources for that kind of offense? Who else but Tywin?

How many people were in the prison? How many died? Did anyone get out? Is there anyone _left_?

Humans _are _the bastards. Fuck his father. Fuck everyone who went along with it. Fuck_ him_, fuck _Jaime_, fuck everything he’s ever done to help his father gain power. He did this. _He _did this. _This is my fault._

Brienne doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t say anything. She leads the way over the crumbling wall, and Jaime trails behind. There are only a few zombies left inside the prison. Brienne and Karsi and Tormund make quick work of them, killing them quietly, with knives, while Mance and Jaime follow.

The door to the inner offices, where everyone lived before, has been completely removed. The bodies in the doorway are piled high, and they trail past, beyond, leading deeper into the living spaces.

There’s evidence everywhere of a careful hand. Pretty flowers painted on the wall. Colorful linens and knitted scarves and hats. Catelyn Stark made sure that this place felt like a home to the people who were forced to live here, and even with the stench and the blood and the occasional zombie that needs to be put down, that’s apparent.

There’s a door in the back hallway that leads outside, and it’s still on its hinges, but it swings wildly. Hanging open, leading out into the yard. Mance and Tormund head in that direction, signaling to the others to head upstairs.

In one room, they find a crying child. A little girl, who hid under the bed when the fighting started and hasn’t moved for a day. Karsi stays to ask her questions and look after her, and Jaime and Brienne move on.

Brienne heads for the watchtower. Jaime doesn’t ask any questions. He follows.

The Starks must have been living at the top. It looks like it was probably homey. There are beds with hand-knitted blankets. A child’s drawings taped on the walls. Three of the four walls are windows, and there’s a view up here of the street below. There’s a walkway around the outside, with railings. Jaime remembers it well from when he escaped his cells the first time and found himself accidentally moving up instead of out as he tried to evade the guards. He remembers holding the younger Stark boy over the edge, threatening to drop him if they didn’t let him go. The door to the walkway hangs open now, wind rushing in.

On the floor, in the middle of the room, is Tywin.

He has the pale pallor and the ghostly gray skin of a zombie, though one side of his head has been thoroughly smashed in. His blood and brains are splattered on the blankets and the drawings and the rug on the floor. Jaime stares.

“I’m sorry,” Brienne says.

“Why?” Jaime asks. His voice sounds hollow. Unconcerned. Why? Why would she be sorry? Jaime’s barely sorry. He loved his father. Loved in the way a child can be convinced to love any father, however poor a father that man might be. He’s dead now. _Good. _He did this. Why would Jaime mourn a monster?

“Jaime,” she says. He follows her eyes. A smear of blood leads away, to the open door that leads to the walkway outside.

* * *

Catelyn Stark wrapped a white cloth around her neck to stop the bleeding, but it’s brown and red with half-dried blood now. She sits with her body hunched against the wind, curled toward the building, away from the view. Her eyes are closed. Jaime grabs Brienne’s shirt and pulls her back when she tries to bend closer.

“Wait,” he whispers.

Catelyn’s eyes open. Slowly, squinting like she isn’t used to the light. She shifts.

Her eyes are the same lively blue they always were. They aren’t the filmed over, yellowing filth of the zombies. But her skin is graying, and there are purple lines of infection creeping out from behind the cloth around her neck.

“She’s been bitten,” Jaime says.

“You,” Catelyn rasps.

“I’m sorry,” Brienne says. Her voice is quiet, ashamed. Whispered. Not anything like the Brienne he knows. She’s terrified to face Catelyn, Jaime realizes. Terrified because _he’s_ here, and because this is his fault.

“We found your girls,” he forces himself to say. He’s still holding on to Brienne. “Sansa and Arya. They were with Petyr Baelish in Vale. Brienne saved them.”

Catelyn’s eyes linger on him with a feverish hate. She sits up further, and Jaime takes a step back, dragging Brienne with him.

“You brought them here,” Catelyn says to him.

“They’re a few blocks back,” Jaime says weakly. “We can get them, bring them here, if you want to…”

“Jaime,” Brienne says gently. “She means…”

Jaime shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “I didn’t tell my father anything. I never made it back to the hospital. I knew he didn’t have the girls. I didn’t want…I wanted to find them for you.”

But it’s true, isn’t it? _You brought them here._ And he knows from the look in the dying Catelyn Stark’s eyes that none of his excuses matter, because it’s _true_. He didn’t physically lead his father here. He didn’t make those choices. But he may as well have.

He wanted to follow Brienne. He wanted to be with Brienne. He was selfish. And this is what happened.

“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice cracks. “I’m sorry. I don’t...”

“Catelyn, where are the boys?” Brienne asks. She steps closer, and Jaime reluctantly lets her go, releasing her shirt. His hand is trembling. He looks back inside and sees that his father’s eyes are locked on him. Dead. Staring. Seeing anyway.

“I sent them with Hodor,” Catelyn manages. “North. To Benjen.”

“Good. That’s good. We didn’t see Hodor’s body anywhere,” Brienne says with muted, obviously false cheer. “Right, Jaime?”

“No,” Jaime says, automatically. Catelyn is still staring at him. Hating him.

“We would have seen him,” Brienne says desperately. “We’ll take the girls and go north. We have Jon with us, as well. He heard that we had the girls, and he came looking for us. We’ll take them all north. We’ll find Benjen.”

Catelyn closes her eyes at last, and she nods, and Jaime feels still pinned by her gaze even when her eyes aren’t on him.

“Thank you,” Catelyn says. She looks at Brienne again, beseeching. “Just you. Please. Don’t. Don’t trust…”

Brienne’s face falls, and she looks back at Jaime. Jaime looks at his feet. She’s right, of course. He can’t be trusted. He’s a selfish, stupid idiot who got a good woman and the gods know how many other good people killed because he for some reason didn’t realize that this father would take his disappearance as an attack and go for the prison.

“Jaime saved my life,” Brienne says “He could have run, but he didn’t, and he lost his hand for it. And then Baelish pushed me into a pit full of zombies, and Jaime jumped in after me. He protected the girls. They love him, Catelyn. He’s one of us now.”

Jaime loathes the fact that tears come into his eyes at that. A defense that he doesn’t deserve._ I did this. This was my fault. _

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Sorry,” Catelyn repeats. There’s so much scorn in her voice.

* * *

Jaime offers to be the one to do it, but Brienne asserts that it must be her, and Catelyn agrees. Jaime leaves them there and stands an awkward vigil over his father’s body as Brienne says her goodbyes outside and Catelyn whispers instructions. Jaime sees the tears in Brienne’s eyes, and he sees the way Brienne shakes her head, and he knows Catelyn is still talking about him. He can’t blame her. He can’t feel anything.

For his own father, he feels rage. Fury. Disgust. Sadness, in a sense, but mostly it’s sadness that he allowed his father to rule his life for so long without realizing what a monster he was.

_There it is again_, he realizes, dryly. _The humans have been the true monsters all along._

When Brienne enters the tower room, she has a blood-stained knife in one hand. Her other shakes, and Jaime takes it in his own. She looks down at him.

“I can go back to the hospital,” he says. “If that’s what you want.”

Brienne bites her lip.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“You. I want you to be safe. And happy. This is my fault.”

“It’s your father’s fault.”

“I should have known better. I should have...”

“You sent him a message. He chose to ignore it. He chose to use you as an excuse to do what he already wanted to do. Catelyn didn’t know that. She’s had a full day of dying out here to hate you and me and your father for betraying her.”

“She was right. I would have…if you hadn’t chopped off my hand, I might have done exactly as he asked. Turned on the Starks. This could have been so much worse.”

“But I did chop off your hand. You didn’t betray anyone.”

“I always thought it was the best part of me,” he says. “Shooting. Fighting. Maybe it was the worst.”

“Maybe it was,” Brienne agrees quietly. “But you had two hands when the Mummers attacked, and you still stayed to help me, even though you could have just let me die.”

“I thought about it,” he argues.

“But you didn’t.” She shakes her head at him. A little amusement breaks through the sadness. “That’s what I’m saying. Your instinct was to help. You’re a good person. Please stop trying to convince me you aren’t.”

“All right,” Jaime says. He knows he sounds a bit doubtful. He can’t help it. His instincts are screaming at him to run. Leave her. She’ll be better off, his instincts say. It feels selfish to stay.

“Your father is dead,” she reminds him gently. “If you think you need to make amends, make them by protecting Catelyn’s daughters. Helping me find her sons.”

She says these things the way she says anything else. Like they’re obvious. When he didn’t know her any better, he thought she was naive. He thought that she saw the world in such stark colors. Black and white. But he thinks it may just be higher standards. Higher standards than people like him deserve, maybe, but she makes him want to live up to them.

* * *

It starts snowing three days after they leave the city. It’s been a month since Catelyn Stark died. A long month of negotiating with the people left behind at the hospital, resettling the prison, and rebuilding the living spaces. Brienne first had wanted to set off after the boys immediately, but the girls needed time to grieve. Then she wanted to go on her own and leave the girls and Jon behind, but eventually she was talked out of that as well, because she can’t deny Jaime anything and _he_ can’t deny Arya and Sansa anything.

He has enjoyed the month of sleeping in fortified buildings again, but the cities always feel a little dangerous. His father was a peril on his own, but he’s hardly the only bully who could cause problems, as Jaime’s missing hand can attest to. There aren’t as many safe places to sleep outside the city, but it feels less like a gamble every time he rests his head against Brienne’s shoulder and shuts his eyes.

The snow falls fast, and they find a little neighborhood to post up in until the storm is over. Jaime watches Arya and Sansa and Jon as Jon coaxes the girls out of their sadness to play in the deepening drifts. Even Tormund gets involved, with Karsi laughing at him from the sidelines. Mance and most of his people stayed behind to put the prison back together, but he was kind enough to send these two.

It still stings for Jaime, knowing that he isn’t as much use as he once was. He can’t use bladed weapons as well, and even with guns he’s not as good as he used to be. He’s working on it. He’s been training with Brienne. But he won’t ever be good enough to be one of two adults on a possibly hopeless trek into the wilderness.

Brienne’s laughing at the kids, and then she turns and seeks him out. Her smile broadens when she sees him. She moves back in his direction. She’s so loose like this. The tension gone. There are still zombies to worry about. There’s still winter. There’s still so much. It doesn’t feel like it.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“You need two hands to make a snowball,” he points out, exaggerating his mournfulness just a little, to make her laugh. She only laughs a little.

“All right,” she says, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. She bends down and gestures for him to join her, holding out one of her hands. “Come on. I’ll help you.”

Jaime can’t keep up the act anymore, or the slightly more genuine pout, those glimmers of concern that he’s going to continue to be useless forever. He can’t keep it up when she looks at him that way. Open and wanting and caring about him in a way that he hasn’t felt cared for in so long. Maybe ever. He crouches down beside her, and they’re both soon laughing at themselves as they try to pack together enough snow to make a snowball. Their hands are clumsy, their instincts all wrong as they try to stop bumping each other. He makes it worse by kissing her, and she laughs and ducks her head away. It messes up the whole thing, and they have to start again. It doesn’t matter. They get it done eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who read this, especially everyone telling me you normally hate zombie AUs, because that's extremely flattering lmao

**Author's Note:**

> title is from elysium by Bear's Den. chapter title is from blankets of sorrow, also by Bear's Den. This is gonna be a Bear's Den appreciation fic apparently.


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